


Too Much

by kihadu



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Awkwardness, Canon Disabled Character, Developing Relationship, Fluff, M/M, issues with physical proximity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-13
Updated: 2014-04-11
Packaged: 2018-01-15 14:05:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 27
Words: 22,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1307557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kihadu/pseuds/kihadu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hermann does not and will not find the ex-neuroscientist-now-barista attractive. That’s not a thing he’s going to do, he’s going to go back to his office and deal with whatever woes his grad students have concocted today.<br/>Yes.<br/>(No.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. no you are not doing this

**Author's Note:**

> As with everything I write this is a bad decision I did not intend to do this I need to do research on injury incidence and severity but there are, like, 3 Newt/Hermann coffee shop AUs, so whatever.

They do not meet on a Tuesday.

It is a Tuesday when Hermann walks into the cafe, but they don’t meet. He goes in because it’s on the way to his new office - the entire mathematics department was moved over one block, and Hermann has no opinion on this beyond calling it a 'sub-standard idea' and 'idiotic' and various choice words in German, because the Head of Mathematical Sciences does not speak German.

Still, it’s pointless and awful and worst of all there’s not decent parking. He wants to write a letter of complaint, but knows he’ll probably forget between unpacking his boxes and arranging his grad students. Most importantly, the move has meant that the staffroom is not properly set up, and there isn’t a coffee machine. There isn’t so much as a kettle.

So Hermann walks into the first cafe he sees in the vicinity, and immediately regrets his decision. The cafe is narrow, three seats against one wall and a bar with several stools along the other, and at the end is a tiny bench and a giant coffee machine, and two rather large men are somehow crammed behind that bench. Two rather large men, and Newton. 

Hermann doesn’t know his name is Newton. He does know that the man’s voice is too loud and too high-pitched and too grating as he laughs at something one of the too-big men says. The other folds his too-large arms on the very small counter and asks Hermann for his order. He gets a coffee with an extra shot, making it a latte at the last second because he figures he needs the protein from the milk.

He stands as much to the side as he’s able, which isn’t very much at all, and without meaning to ends up listening into a conversation had between three girls in dresses designed for much warmer weather. They’re talking about some poet, something about hyacinths and chess. 

The place is awfully busy despite its size, but the man didn’t ask him his name and Hermann watches with some suspicion as the three men dance around each other in the narrow space behind the counter. The smaller one, the one with tattoos, grins at Hermann as he places a cup down. 

"Yours, I think," he says. “Double-shot latte?” Hermann nods and tries his very best to leave without touching anyone. It doesn’t work. The place is too small, too loud, too busy. He hates it.

The coffee is very good, and the staffroom in the new building takes over a week to get set up. Hermann likes his tea, but in the morning he needs his coffee to get him going.

So he goes back. 


	2. fuck

It’s not _his_ coffee shop. The staffroom is set up, now, and most often it’s far easier to go down the corridor than it is to go down the street.

The reason for that is simple.

Sometimes the other doctors in the office go out for lunch, and sometimes they don’t invite him. It’s the cane, or the fact that he’s not very easy to get along with.

He rather suspects that he’s a very boring person.

He doesn’t really have hobbies. He has his maths, his physics, an occasional foray into the biological sciences when someone feels like collaborating - something he suspects is going to happen far less often now that the biology department is a full ten minute walk away, even for someone with two working legs.

He doesn’t… small talk. His idea of small talk is someone else’s idea of quantum-level physics, and ofttimes they’re the exact same thing. He listens to music that was popular half a decade ago and he has a limp.

As much as Hermann wants his leg to just be an aspect to him, as easily dismissed as his wide mouth or bad hair, it’s not. It makes him slow and it makes particular places difficult to get to or plain inaccessible. And he’s just got a cane. (He dreads to think of the day that his shoulder gives out, the day that he has to give in (give up) and wheel himself around. Hawking manages it, but Hawking is a genius. Hermann’s very good but he’s not good enough to demand that sort of inconvenience.)

It’s not his coffee shop. He doesn’t go there more than three or four (or five) times a week. The coffee’s better than the stuff in the staffroom, and as awful as the atmosphere is, it is a break from mathematics. Sometimes he needs that. Needs to get out of his head for half an hour to walk down the street and remember that there are other people with other hobbies (those girls in sundresses talking about Eliot - he remembered to look up the poet but he hasn’t remembered to find out who to complain to about the fact that there is no handicapped parking for his new office).

Newt has served him, and Hermann knows his name now only from overhearing conversation between the baristas. He still hates his voice, hates the ugly mess of colours on his arms, hates the cafe hates everything and everyone, but Hermann is coming to understand that perhaps his initial reaction is to hate. Some people start out half in love with the world, well, Hermann, he starts out fully in hate. He has to be cajoled to contemplate so much as tolerance.

So he hates the walk to the cafe and the baristas and the Eliot-loving barstool-hogging girls, but with each cup of coffee he hates it all a little less.

He loves his numbers.

They’re the only thing that have ever been kind to him.

The students he supervises are a different matter altogether, and it’s this that forces him out into the world and into his first actual conversation with Newt.

Hermann has strict office hours which his students ignore, and two of his classes have three assignments due in the next week. He takes his laptop and stuffs his glasses into his pocket, and stumbles out into the bright street blinking like an owl.

He doesn’t have anywhere to go so he goes to the cafe, and he shoves his things down as soon as he enters to claim the last empty barstool. It’s far enough into his relationship with this coffee shop that whichever buff blond man it is behind the counter gives him a sharp nod.

“Go sit, I’ll bring it out to you,” he says, and his accent is maybe Australian, maybe South African; either way it’s the asshole that chewed out a customer for spilling sugar all over the counter the day before. Hermann goes to sit, hurriedly, so that the man doesn’t have any reason to treat his coffee less than kindly.

He’s sat for perhaps forty minutes, coffee drunk and cup taken away, and he shifts his weight from hip to hip while he waits for his computer to finish contemplating the equation he just fed it.

“Dr Gottlieb?”

He jerks his head around and scowls at the person. Student. He’s got one of those singlets with the armholes that extend all the way down to the ribs, and his arms are very nice so perhaps it’s justified, but Hermann disapproves. Immensely, and not merely because the student is intruding on an area meant to be student-free.

“Sorry, I’m so sorry, but you’re not in your office and I thought I’d get a coffee only to find that you’re here!” The student takes some papers out of his satchel. “It’s only a simple question, silly, really, you kind of didn’t explain it? I think I’m meant to get it already but I don’t. I think I should drop maths as a major, I just -”

Hermann takes his cane and uses it to hook the leg of the stool next to him. “Put your things down,” he says. “Get me another coffee.”

“Bribery?” asks the student, brightening up. “Sure. What are you having?”

He teaches the student - Max, apparently - what was first year mathematics and he really should know it already. Max is overeager and energetic and appallingly apologetic at every mistake he makes, which is better than arrogance and Hermann’s a little amused by it all. Eventually Max grins and nods and gathers up his things, shaking Hermann’s hand twice to thank him and apologising again for interrupting him outside of his office.

“It’s fine,” says Hermann. “You’ve got a good attitude.”

“But not the brain,” says Max, face falling a little. Then he brightens again. “That’s alright. Effort’s most of it, yeah?”

Hermann doesn’t think so, but he gives a curt nod and Max trots off.

“That was really nice of you. Didn’t think you had it in you,” says a voice. Hermann looks up at Newt.

“Excuse me?”

“You always come in here all scowly, even after coffee, which is rare.”

“I do not.”

“Do too,” retorts Newt. “You’re a teacher, yeah?”

“Yes,” sighs Hermann.

“Dude, don’t be like that, you’re great! I understood what you were saying, and I hate maths. Thank god for grad students, else the stats in all my papers woulda been screwed to the wall, and not in a fun way, y’know?”

“I,” Hermann has no idea what to say to that. “Papers? You work in a coffee shop!”

“Yeah,” Newt shrugs, finishes wiping the bar and slings the cloth over his forearm. “Thought I’d take a bit of time off between doctorates. Needed a break. I know you get that, so don’t deny it,” he quickly adds, though Hermann was about to do no such thing. “Did a buncha work on zebra fish.”

“Neural science?” asks Hermann.

Newt shrugs again, as though neural science is simplistic. “For a bit.” As though it were a hobby. Hermann stares. “Anyway,” says Newton. “Nose to the grindstone,” he jerks his head at the counter, where there’s a short line waiting. “See you later.”

Hermann stares. Neuroscientists don’t quit to become coffee shop workers. That sort of job is meant for students struggling for rent.

He is, despite himself, immediately a little in love.

Unfortunately, searching Google Scholar for “Newt zebra fish” comes up with too many of the wrong sort of hits, and without knowing more Hermann cannot judge what manner of scientist he is. Or was. Perhaps he left academia not by choice, but due to poor research methods and bad conclusions. It’s happened before.

After that, Hermann looks at him a little differently. The tattoos are less irritating than they are intriguing. Hermann finds himself side-eyeing them to determine what shapes have been engraved into skin (Hermann knows from first-year science that the inks can be found amongst the dermal fibroblasts, some travelling as far as the lymph nodes under the armpits, and other regions - this makes Hermann wonder where else Newt might have tattoos, where else in his body the inks might be sinking).

He finds himself watching the man. His voice is less irritating. The Buddy Holly glasses are… adorable, nearly. Perhaps. Hermann would never admit it. He scarcely admits it to himself. He feels himself having the thought and shakes his head in horror. He finishes his coffee quickly and he flees.

He does not and will not find the ex-neuroscientist-now-barista attractive. That’s not a thing he’s going to do, he’s going to go back to the office and deal with whatever woes his grad students have concocted today.

Yes.

His cane is a comforting familiar fit to the shape his hand, and everyone is slightly too slow to dodge out of his way as he flees the cafe. He latches onto the irritation, and uses it to drown out the discomforting feelings welling softly in his chest. 


	3. 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Goodness, um, there's a lot of very fast interest in this fic. I hope you enjoy it. (I'm very bad at dragging things out and either write everything in a few days or nothing ever, so I expect everything will be finished by the end of the weekend and I'll have posted it all in rather short order.)
> 
> Oh! And the coffee shop is based on Coffee Branch on Leigh St, Adelaide (it's great, but small), and the research Rachel/Hermann is working on in this chapter was conducted by the University of South Australia. The stuff that Newton mentions is titled "mathematical modelling of the complex mechanics of biological materials and their role in tissue function and development", and was begun at the University of Adelaide last year. I might not understand the science but I'll try to make everything mentioned actual real things.

He wakes up one Thursday and sighs and smiles. He likes Thursdays. He doesn’t have lessons to give, and he hasn’t got any meetings scheduled with students, and he doesn’t have to answer the door when someone knocks.

It’s midmorning before his stomach gurgles to inform him that the toast he ate for breakfast was not enough, and the headache starting in his temples reminds him that coffee is necessary.

He takes his cane and his glasses and puts a Penguin Classic into his pocket and he goes down to the cafe.

He can’t get in.

In the few weeks of frequenting this particular cafe he’s found that this particular plight is not uncommon. The doorway is small and there’s scarcely room inside for everyone to sit let alone for a line to form, but Hermann can only see two people. They’re very large people. Larger than the two nearly exchangeable buff white dudes who make coffee. Hermann has to take a step back just to take them all in. All he can see is blond hair.

“Gottlieb! Is that you?” Hermann calls back in the affirmative before he thinks to question how Newt knows his name. Names aren’t exchanged here, orders are taken and given and the baristas just know which is who’s. “Sit outside. Black, double shot?”

Hermann doesn’t like sitting outside. The seats are too low and there’s too much in the way of weather.

“I was hoping to purchase morning tea,” he calls back. The two huge bodies swing around to peer down at him. He stares, and swallows, and sits. The man says nothing; the woman has her hand on the man’s forearm. Possessive. This is mine.

He suddenly worries that he’s too close even with several metres between them, and he wonders if he could ever be like that towards Newt. Or if Newt’s the possessive type.

Somehow Newt squeezes past them with a cup in one hand. He puts it down in front of Hermann and grins. “Sorry about them. They take up space. Woulda brought you food but you never eat here, so I dunno what you like. What do you like?”

“What do you have?”

“Uhhh, lavender cupcake, chocolate cupcake, ham and cheese croissant, chicken focaccia, lemon tart, uhhh… I’m probably missing some stuff. Usually people just point at the board.”

“A lemon tart will do nicely, thank you. Take away, please.”

“Course,” says Newt. He squints from the sun and smiles. Hermann feels tense and awful and he wants to touch Newt very much. “Sorry about them. They take up space. Friends of Stacker, though, so can’t argue.”

“Stacker?”

“Owner. You know, big black guy, face like he’s about to rip you one?”

“I believe I have ordered coffee from him before.” There’s an awkward pause, and Hermann shifts, fingers on the lid of his coffee as though that’s something to occupy them. It’s moments like these that remind Hermann why he doesn’t want to actually get to know the barista. Talking ruins things. He has a lovely idea of what the man might be like and getting to know him will shatter all those assumptions.

“Right, well, I’ll go get your lemon tart.”

“How much is it?” asks Hermann, just before the man leaves.

“Oh! Uh.” Newt screws up his nose, thinking, and it’s abominable that he takes so long for a simple matter of addition. “Nine-seventy.”

Hermann gives him a ten and tells him to not bother with the change. The lemon tart is, well, tart, but in that perfect sort of way, and it doesn’t go very well with the coffee but it does go well with maths, and huge blond couple aside his Thursday keeps on being perfect. He stays at the office late working, and he gets home to heat up the remainder of last night’s dinner, which he eats while the news is on mute and he has a book on his lap.

He wants to talk to someone about Newt, but he also doesn’t. He wants to keep him all to himself. As if there’s anything to keep.

 

Friday he wakes up early and rushes to teach an 8am class. The students want to be there even less than he does, so he teaches and returns to his office to find one of his grad students waiting with a mournful look. Her calculations aren’t working. She’s already asked three different people and no one knows what the matter is. Hermann needs a coffee, so he takes the stack of paper and promises to talk to her about it before the end of the day.

He goes to get coffee.

 

“Hey, dude.”

“Good morning,” says Hermann, not looking up from the paper.

“Bad day?” asks Newt.

“It’s Friday.”

“I hear that. Do you want a refill?” Hermann pushes his cup towards Newt.

“That would be marvellous, thank you.”

“Whatcha workin’ on?”

“Singular and analytic perturbations, slow and fast time scales in control theory and viability theory.”

“Oh, sweet!” Newt plunks himself down on the seat beside Hermann.

“I thought you did not like maths.”

“I don’t. I did work on this paper about modelling the interaction between biological materials. Super sweet stuff. Let me see this,” he says, and snatches the paper from Hermann. “Oh, nah, this is all Greek to me. What’s it mean?”

“We are trying to develop new techniques for the analysis and asymptotic optimisation of singularly perturbed control systems and Markov decision processes.”

“Huh,” says Newt. He shrugs. “Nup, still Greek.”

“There might be a link between general nonlinear optimal control problems with time average -”

Newt interrupts with a laugh. “Dude, I’m a biologist. Maths? Too hardcore for me.”

“There is an error in her manner of thinking,” says Hermann, preening a little at the acknowledgement of the difficulty of his field.

Newt slaps him on the back, lets his hand linger there too long, and Hermann flinches both at the suddenness of the contact and the fact that he can feel the warmth of Newt’s hand through his jacket. “Well, I believe in you. Coffee?”

Hermann swallows. “Thank you.”

 

Later, as he gets up to leave, one of the blond guys tells him goodbye and Newt jerks his head up from the foam art he’s creating.

“Off so soon? Figure it out?”

“No,” says Hermann mournfully.

“Remember, I believe in you,” says Newt. He gives him a lopsided grin. “Have a good weekend.”

Hermann apologises to Rachel, and she tries to be positive and say that she’ll have to do more study into the area, which would work except that this is a new area and they only have so much grant money to pay her. Then, he goes back to his office and closes his door. He hangs up his coat and leans his cane against his desk, opens up Google Scholar and searches “Newt model interaction tissue zebra fish”. There are no useful results.

Hermann remembers Newt’s farewell, and wonders what Newt’s last name is.

He thinks about him once every few minutes the entire evening, and then once every half hour over the rest of the weekend with increasing frequency over Sunday evening as he realises that the next day he’ll get to see the man again.

So, perversely, he doesn’t go to the cafe.

Because.

Because he’ll say something cruel and Newt will hate him.

Or Newt will finally notice his cane and realise he wants nothing to do with him.

Because Newt will realise his interest and be repulsed by it.

Because the accented blond guy disturbs him on several levels.

He drinks coffee in the staffroom and talks with Harley about galaxy creation. It’s not bad. It’s actually rather good. Harley understands astrophysics and probabilities and they can talk about numbers while drinking bad coffee.

Except.

It’s not Newt.

 


	4. 3

The next time he goes back to the cafe he feels awfully aware of himself in a way he hasn’t since his first year of university, before he’d realised that probably no one will ever much like him so he might as well stop trying to let them.

He feels absolutely aware of his clothes, of his hair, of the way his glasses slip down the bridge of his nose. He worries about his bony white fingers and he worries about the way he sits with his papers and the way he holds his pen as he checks assignments.

One of the buff guys had served him today, the monosyllabic black guy, so Newt hasn’t spoken to Hermann today. Oh, he’s talking, Hermann can hear his voice and it’s irritating, too loud and too fast for the cramped cafe, but he’s not talking to Hermann.

Hermann wants, desperately, to talk to the man. About… About anything. About the particular brand of soy milk they use. About his tattoos. About the weird music that’s currently playing on the cafe speakers.

He wants to find out more about what science he left, to find out more about him. He wants more than the attention he gets from buying his coffee and he has absolutely no intention of embarrassing himself by trying to get it.

He knows himself. He knows the sort of person he is and he knows how other people see him.

He doesn’t know how other people do it, how they meet people and immediately befriend them. Everyone talked about university as a place where friends just happened, you’d meet someone and suddenly you’d be spending hours chatting about coursework and the colour of the sky, and you’d be invited out to drinks on the weekend and weddings a few years later.

It took him seven months to talk to Vanessa, another four before they had a conversation about something other than coursework. Now, of course, it’s been perhaps three years since they’ve spoken. Emails, sure, Facebook comments and discussions about research, but the personal element is lost and Hermann has no idea how to get it back.

He has no idea how it got there in the first place.

He hasn’t gone out on a Friday for over a year.

(Family’s a different matter. Family are just there. Socially acceptable Stockholm syndrome he calls it, but last time he’d told that to Karla and she’d giggled and bumped his good hip with hers.)

He wants to talk to Newt, to have Newt notice him and accept him and want him. He wants to talk about Newt, to have people acknowledge this aspect of his life. It’s exciting in a manner completely different to statistical mechanics or quantum communication.

He buys his coffee and he drinks it at the cafe only if there’s a stool spare, and he looks at Newt and he smiles at Newt, careful not to be too overeager, careful to keep his reactions tempered and careful to also smile at whoever else is behind the counter.

Because, if he’s honest with himself, this sort of thing never lasts long.

He knows who he is. He’ll be damned if he compromises for anyone. He buys his coffee and he does his maths and he finally finds someone who arranges handicapped parking. 


	5. Soy Chai

 

 

 

 

“Here’s your coffee. No, not that one. Chuck, what are you doing? That’s the soy chai for the lady, that’s the latte for the mathematician.”

“Why can’t the lady be a mathematician? That’s sexist, that is.”

“Maybe she is! Do I look like I know? Miss, are you a mathematician?”

The lady giggles, and blushes a little. “No.”

“See, Chuck? He’s the mathematician, she’s not. He comes in here all the time, does his maths over on the counters.”

“Oh, yeah. Him."

"Here’s your latte, and there’s your chai. Sorry for the confusion, miss.”

The lady giggles again. Hermann doesn’t like anyone giggling at anything Newt says, so he takes his drink and he flees.

 

 

 


	6. 5.1

Hermann rubs his forehead, takes off his glasses and rubs the bridge of his nose.

“What are you working on?” The voice is intrusive, obnoxious, loud. “More time optimisation?”

“It’s not…” He cuts himself off from explaining Rachel’s research more precisely. “No. That is not my field.”

“What’s your field?”

“I did my PhD in probability, but currently I am working in astronomical and space science.”

“Oh, stars and shit? Sweet!”

Hermann gives Newt a withering glare, which he holds onto through sheer force of will. Newt is smiling and bright and he has a tattoo on his neck that looks red and raw.

“Yes. Stars ‘and shit’,” he says.

“You do any work with aliens? Always wanted to be a xenobiologist,” says Newt.

“Of course you did,” mutters Hermann. This is why he doesn’t like talking to people. He likes to form a crush, entertain it, and then let it go away without anything happening. Actual people never quite fit the beautiful ideas inside his mind. They’re too chaotic.

“So? Whatcha workin’ on?”

“The impacts of shocks and outflow on galaxy assembly.”

“Like how stars are made? Cool, dude, super cool. Anything to do with dark matter?”

“…Some.”

“Nice, nice,” says Newt, nodding, then he chuckles. “Honestly, you could say anything. I don’t -”

“I know,” interrupts Hermann, irritated, wanting to be left to his numbers and his fantasies (he imagines Newt being quiet, Newt stepping up behind him softly and pressing a kiss to his neck, placing a cup of coffee down in front of him, and letting him get on with his numbers. Here and now, with Newt beside him, the imagination fails. Newt will never be quiet). “You don’t like mathematics.”

“Yeah! It’s all messy and weird.”

“It is order, pure order. _Biology_ is chaotic.”

“Nah, man, you get an ion channel and hit it with the right shit and it’s gonna open, get the voltage down again and shit’s gonna close. It just is.”

“Except in the case of genetic mutations or drug interference or desensitisation…” He wonders what results he’d get for “Newt channelopathies”.

“But the order’s there, you just gotta find it.” Newt leans back. “Nah, dude, I’m not gonna argue this with you. Keep your physics.”

“And leave you to your coffee?”

“Exactly.”

“Do you plan on returning to academia?”

“Maybe? I dunno. There’s some cool shit goin’ on in neuroscience, but I dunno. Maybe I need a new doctorate.”

“A new one? How many do you have?” he asks, incredulous, shocked, and intimidated in a way he hasn’t felt in a while. He does not know how intelligent this man is. He does not know how he measures up.

“Five so far. I reckon the sixth one’ll stick.”

“Five? Mein Gott.”

“Hah! So you are German!” Hermann blinks, bewildered.

“… I was born in Garmisch-Partenkirchen.”

“Me in Berlin. Crazy, dude.”

“Indeed,” says Hermann. His skin is prickling. Newt is leaning close and he can feel the heat of his body. It’s stifling in the smallness of the cafe, and now there’s this. There’s this other bond between them, a language and a country and he cannot stand it.

“Anyway, before I left there was a bunch of research into AT - artificial tissue.”

“I know what AT stands for,” Hermann snaps.

“Just makin’ sure,” grins Newt. “I thought maybe I could do something in that. I mean, I’ve done some work in that already, but not heaps.”

“I thought you were a neuro-scientist.”

“I am.” He holds up a hand, all fingers extended. “Five doctorates, remember?”

“You overachieving lunatic,” he says, and it doesn’t come out as fondly as he intended. “And you quit to, what, serve coffee to the masses?”

“Are you mad that I left the halls of stinking students to-”

“Work in this stinking cupboard? No, I don’t care what you do. You can shimmy up a pole naked if it gives you pleasure. I just don’t see how anyone could be so fickle to require five doctorates.”

“Couldn’t figure what I love.”

He smiles, and Hermann hates him and he doesn’t hate him, not even a little bit.


	7. Coffee

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Your comments keep me going. Thank you for reading <3

Hermann isn’t one of those pretentious twats who wax lyrical about coffee.

He doesn’t wax lyrical about anything.

He’s afraid that’s going to change.

Newt is beautiful making coffee. He thins his lips and presses his tongue to the corner of his cheek, bulging it out, as he tamps down the grind and arranges a row of cups beneath the heads. He dances - dances! - around the other two men, and there’s no space but somehow they do it, pass coffee to milk-steamer and Hermann has lost himself in the very particular movement of the wrist that Newt does to finish off his latte art.

They make coffees and pass them out, and no matter how busy it is, no matter how many people are crammed into the tiny space, even when one of the customers bumps into someone, shattering teacup and mini teakettle, even then they’re always cheerful.

Well, except for accented blond guy, but Hermann’s beginning to believe that’s just how the man’s face is set. In any case, it’d be hypocritical of him to judge someone for being perpetually annoyed by the state of the world.

Hermann watches them all and marvels. Sometimes, coming close to the end of a research grant when everyone is hectically trying to solve the last few problems he and his colleagues will all move into the same room and work together, but they’re never like this. This, it’s almost choreographed.

The coffee is heady, bitter and lingering. There’s brown dust along Newt’s forearms, and Hermann wants to lick it off. He drinks tea, sure, at the office, his own brew that he sets carefully on his desk and drinks over the afternoon, but the mornings require coffee and these days coffee is not coffee unless he’s here in this awful tiny place watching these huge men and Newt sidestep each other.

Hermann isn’t particularly good with words. For that reason he never writes a paper alone, always with a second who checks over his paragraphs. He is good with numbers.

He wonders if there’s an equation to map out the particular steps the baristas make around each other. He beings typing idly into his program, giving each person their own variable and judging the area of the space and counting the number of steps.

He wonders if he could get a grant for this sort of study.

Everything, in the end, is a matter of probability. The universe is a series of statistical unlikelihoods. The chances of you existing are so minuscule that Hermann is bewildered, sometimes, that the world keeps ticking on. (Hermann is anti-war to his very core. It rankles him more deeply than he knows how to express. There are too many people set on destroying a mathematically unlikely collection of stardust. It’s preposterous.)

Coffee is a number, the pressure of the water through the group, the size of the grind to the bitterness of the coffee (quantifiable, he’s certain, it has to be), the volume of water to milk.

Everything, in the end, is a number.

Hermann likes this. He takes comfort in it. He’s a cranky cripple old before his time, but spread out into maths he’s scarcely different to anyone else.

Newt’s different to everyone else.

Hermann’s never watched someone as much as he watches Newt. 


	8. Three shots

“Black.” He rests his cane against the counter to take out his wallet. It slips and clatters to the floor, and Hermann needs to put his hand on the counter to help lower himself to pick it back up. “Extra shot.”

“Want me to make that an extra two shots?” asks one of the blond guys. Not the accented one. The nice one. “You look like you need it, buddy.”

Hermann slumps. He was hoping that Newt would serve him, but he’s at the back with the toasters putting together a sandwich.

It’s just been that kind of day.

“Can you do that?” he asks.

“For you? Anything, buddy. I’ll make it quick as I can.”

The coffee wakes him up so much he makes a few jokes in one of his classes, and his students even laugh. 


	9. 5 (manic)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, important stuff: everything I know about hip/knee ailments is from my own, non-serious issues, and my experience of bipolar and ADHD is second hand. I don't want to make things wrong but seeing as I'm not speaking personally here obviously I might not be getting some things right. If there are issues please talk to me. I don't wanna write bad fiction.

Newt’s an all-or-nothing kind of guy. More up than down, but when he’s up he’s up, and when he’s down he cannot do things. He cannot get out of bed.

He wakes up and bounces out of bed immediately, he’s got toast in the toaster that he forgets about in favour of chugging juice right from the container, emptying it, and he puts it back beside the other empty one with a promise to himself to deal with it later. He grabs a handful of cereal right out the box and sits down with his laptop on the couch. He gets a lot of emails, emails from old students wanting to be recommended for research, emails from old teachers wanting his input. Colleagues want his advice and various universities occasionally ask if he wouldn’t just reconsider their offer to join their department? A few drug companies seem to be hiring, and he ignores those emails, watches thirty seconds of a two-minute Youtube clip, decides he needs his socks, loses a sock, marks the emails he needs to deal with later as Unread, reads but does not respond to a few messages on Facebook, finishes his cereal and remembers his toast, forgets his toast to see if his Gojira shirt is clean, forgets his shirt to brush his teeth, returns to the shirt, finishes his toast, finds pants, and it’s midway through putting on shoes that he realises what sort of day it’s going to be.

He medicates, runs his fingers through his hair, and rides his moped to work.

Stacker is there unlocking the door, and Newt bounces on the balls of his feet, impatient to get in, to put the chairs down, to make coffee. Stacker looks down at him, severely.

“Is today going to be a problem?”

“Nah, man, just the usual. Bit of an upper today, yeah? I mean, that’s good,” he pushes past Stacker spins on his heel and grins. “Less work for you. More productive like this. Always have been.”

Stacker gives him a look that tells exactly what he thinks of that statement, but Newt doesn’t see it, already getting to work.

 

“Gooooood morning Mr Gottlieb!”

Hermann flinches at how chipper the man is.

“It’s Doctor Gottlieb.”

“Oh, yes, right, sorry.” Newt flicks something and steam comes billowing out of the machine. He flicks it shut again, spins on his heel, and Hermann wonders what the man looks like when he’s got space to move. “What can I get you? Chai? Caramel? Mint? Mocha?”

“Just coffee.”

“Iced, no cream, dash of vanilla?”

Hermann’s had enough of various people needling at him, and this mood of Newton’s is not something he has any desire to put up with.

“Long black-”

“Seven shots?”

Hermann gives him a withering stare. “Two shots. And I will have it to go.”

“But there’s a seat free!” Newt points at the bar. “Just wiped it down and everything. Newspapers there if you haven’t got a book, there’s a real funny cartoon by the editorials but you don’t look the sort to keep up with world events so probably you wont get it.”

“Oi!” says Stacker, turning around from where he’s sorting out sandwiches. “He’s not payin’ us for chit-chat.”

“Aw, but he probably is. Mathematicians never talk about anything fun.”

“This morning my department had a meeting to discuss the probability of alien lifeforms in a galaxy we recently discovered.”

His deadpan delivery throws Newt, and the man stares for several seconds.

“Seriously? What’s your conclusion?”

Hermann adopts a bored expression and shifts his cane from right hand to left to right again. “We require more calculations.”

“Course you do,” says Newt. “That’s what you’re all about, standing back and examining and judging and making sure everything is absolutely perfect. It’s why I like medical sciences. You just jump in and do.”

“I very much doubt that,” says Hermann, and he suddenly worries that he was mistaken, and Newt is not a neuroscientist. He feels seventeen again, checking and rechecking the timetable even though he has it memorised, afraid he’ll get to the wrong room and everyone will know that he’s a new student. Newton is fast and confident or at least uncaring, which is probably the same thing, while Hermann is alone and stupid and not meant to be at university.

“Yeah, but we didn’t spend years fiddling with numbers. Eventually, Gottlieb, you gotta just go.”

Stacker makes a growling sort of noise, and Newt leaps into making coffee.

Hermann wants Newt to keep talking.

“Is that what you did? Decided to just go and left academia?”

“All those stuffy professors? Gotta learn to live in the real world.”

Hermann straightens, bristling. “I do live in the real world.”

Newt looks him up and down, taking in the pants that are sitting too high and the collared shirt buttoned all the way up, and he passes Hermann’s coffee over with a sneer. “Sure you do.”

Hermann does not say goodbye.

 

The next day Newt is not there. Hermann does not ask and no one offers an explanation. He pays for coffee and a cupcake and reads at the bar. People have to stand close to him get to the counter, and there’s a constant bustle of movement around him, chatter and music and shoes on the linoleum. He reads scarcely half a chapter of his book. A girl with blue in her hair leans over the counter and kisses one of the blond men. She is the only one who apologises for accidentally brushing against his back in passing.

He is reminded that he hates the cafe, and for a week or two refuses to sit in, no matter if there’s a seat free or students at his office.

No matter that he keeps thinking about Newt. 


	10. Novel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My favourite chapter, maybe.

Newt is outside reading a novel, sitting on a table with his feet on a chair and an empty paper cup beside him. When Hermann sees him his heart absolutely does not skip a beat, and he does not say hello, because he is here for coffee, not Newt. Newt is only an added bonus and with Newt outside and reading there is no reason for any kind of interaction to occur.

There’s a woman with a piercing through her nose behind the counter, someone Hermann’s never seen before. It unsettles him and he stumbles over the first part of his order, prompting him to grind out the second part as though it’s caused him some sort of personal grievance.

“Latte, two shots, and a chocolate cupcake for the,” the woman looks him up and down. She’s got an ambiguous face where Hermann thinks she could be a teenager but she could also be pushing forty. “Gentleman,” she finishes. She very clearly wants to use a different word.

“Gottlieb, yeah?” The man gives him a cheery smile. “I’m Raleigh. Sorry your favourite’s on lunch.”

“He’s on a table,” says Hermann, before he thinks to contradict the idea that Newt is his favourite. He realises that he’s good as confirmed it, and presses his lips shut. Raleigh only smiles at him, the sort of smile that suggests that Hermann can do no wrong, Hermann is perfect and wonderful and Hermann could literally say anything and he would still be smiled at like that. It reminds Hermann of a Labrador.

“Yeah, he does that,” says Raleigh, his eyes crinkling. “If Stacker saw him he’d have his guts ripped out, but hey.” He shrugs and smiles and pushes a cappuccino across with the most beautiful latte art Hermann’s seen. An elderly woman with shaking hands takes it with a toothless smile. “Please say hello to him on your way out. If you don’t he’ll whine for the entire afternoon.”

“Oh, please,” interjects the woman. “You don’t know what it’s like to work with him. He doesn’t shut up.”

“I am well aware of this,” says Hermann with a wry smile. Raleigh gives him a cup and a small cardboard box. “See you tomorrow.”

He nearly puts his cane down on someone’s foot as he turns around to leave, but he glares at them so they apologise. He doesn’t often get blamed for something that’s actually his fault.

“Good afternoon, Newt.”

Newt startles at his voice and nearly slips off the table, which makes Hermann giggle before he realises what sort of noise is coming from his throat. He coughs to cover it up, and Newt’s too distracted by finding his bookmark and not falling off the table to notice.

“Dude! Thought I’d missed you today! You usually come in earlier.”

“One of my colleagues is sick today,” he explains. “I had to take over her classes.” His greeting done he’s not sure what else to say, so he makes to leave.

“Hey, dude! Aren’t you gonna ask how I am? Or even what I’m reading?”

Hermann stops. People do not want to merely chat with him. Casual conversation is something he has no idea how to handle.

“What are you reading?” he asks, voice stiff and formal. Newt chuckles, and holds up the book.

“Paranormal romance. ‘Bout this guy who falls for this other guy, only the other guy’s actually a demon, it’s way cool.”

“Yes, that sounds perfectly wonderful,” drawls Hermann.

Newt laughs loudly. “Nah, man, I borrowed this from Jacintha. The one in there with the,” he gestures at his nose. “Finished my book and don’t have another to read at the moment. Y’know how it is.”

Hermann shifts his weight from foot to cane. “What manner of novels do you usually read?”

“I love how you talk,” breathes Newt, and perhaps he did not mean to say it or even realise he did, because he immediately continues in his usually loud voice that he likes fantasy and sci-fi and horror and thriller but he’s not really into crime novels, but he loves epic adventures and if it’s at least a little bit queer he considers it a bonus, “hence,” he says, gesturing with the book.

“You’re…?” asks Hermann.

“Yeah,” says Newt. “Well… Yeah. Why? Aren’t you?”

Hermann thinks of Vanessa, and he thinks of Newt’s forearms.

“I have not thought about it so specifically,” he admits. “But yes.” He squares his shoulders. “I suppose I am.”

Some tension goes out of Newt. “So? What do you read? Any recommendations for me? I mean, I’ll even go for a stuffy classic if that’s all you’ve got. I’m gettin’ pretty desperate for new stuff.”

Hermann runs through his library, discarding what Newt’s almost definitely read before and what he no doubt has no desire to ever read, and settles on one author.

“Have you heard of Emily Tafield?” Newt shakes his head. “You might be interested in her work.”

“Oh! Sweet,” says Newt, grinning and squinting. It’s adorable. Hermann has to leave.

“My coffee is getting cold,” he says. He almost leaves, but says, hesitantly, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Yeah! Yeah, sure. Have a good one, dude!”


	11. 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posting two chapters at the same time because a) I am an impatient fuck, and b) this one should be read immediately after the chapter before. (And it's not like I leave a lot of down-time between chapters anyway.)

The moment that Hermann walks into the cafe Newt, midway through cleaning up a table, bounds up to him.

“Hey, dude, so, I have a question!”

“A question?” Hermann’s cautious, holding his bag close to him, his cane heavy in his hand. Newt glances around. “Well? Spit it out.”

“Not here. Outside.”

“I never sit outside,” snaps Hermann.

“Yeah, just to talk. Put your stuff down,” Newt snatches the bag off Hermann and puts it onto the bar. “Okay? Chuck, I’m taking a minute.”

It’s cold outside and Hermann wishes he’d worn his parka.

“What is so vital that you felt the need to drag me out here?”

“Just a question. Um. The other day. You said something about. Well.” Hermann glowers at him. “I said I’m, hm, queer, and you said you’d never thought about it but you suppose you are and I just wanted to say that if this is new for you, you can talk to me? I mean, I’ve been there. And my parents weren’t thrilled but they tolerated, but I went to university young so I kind of just… I learned everything really fast and probably way too young, so there’s no judgement from me.”

Hermann stares, runs his tongue over his lips, and continues to stare.

“I mean, maybe I’m overstepping something. But, like, we’re friends? Sorta? I think? We’re friends, right?” He finishes this a little desperately, pleading eyes turned up to Hermann.

“I suppose so,” says Hermann.

“There it is again! You suppose!”

“I have not previously considered whether or not we might be friends,” says Hermann. It’s a lie. “You make my coffee.” He wants Newt to be his friend.

“But we talk. I like talking to you. I reckon we’re friends.” He squints a little, still worried. “Unless… You don’t wanna be?”

Hermann composes himself. “I would not be adverse to considering you a friend.”

Newt’s face relaxes into a wide smile. “So, the whole queer thing. You cool with that? Or,” he breaks off to chuckle. “Let me guess. That’s something you’ve not previously considered.”

“Not in so many words.” Hermann’s grateful to Newt for forcing him outside. The air swallows their words, and Hermann feels like there is something resembling privacy here.

“But you have - I mean, shit. Sorry. But you have, with guys? Or is it just - new?” (He nearly asks, is it is just me, but he realises at the last moment that’s wishful thinking, his own desires forced onto someone else, and he needs to not do that.)

“I have been at university since I was eighteen years old,” says Hermann. “What do you think?”

Newt laughs. “Okay. Yeah, I’ll give you that.”

“I have just never felt the need to give it words,” he continues, slowly. He draws himself up. “I appreciate the concern, but this is not something I have any need to discuss.”

“Sure, sure, dude, whatever you want.”

“Right now I want coffee.”

“One coffee, coming right up.”


	12. Hair

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Based on [my happy headcanon](http://ojirawel.tumblr.com/post/77992385863/ive-been-thinking-about-hermann-gottliebs) of Hermann's hair. 

Newt’s chatting with a lady who’s holding up her kid for Raleigh to see while Chuck has a fight with the coffee machine. There’s a leak, somewhere, and it’s slowly flooding the back of the shop and neither Newt nor Raleigh care enough right now to bother dealing with it.

The baby gurgles, and Raleigh coos, and Newt wonders if it is poor form to find a recent mother as attractive as he finds this woman. He glances at her hand and, yup, married and everything. He bets she has a dog, too. He glances up reflexively at a movement and sees familiar clothes and a familiar face and unfamiliar hair.

“Gottlieb!” he cries. “You got a haircut! It looks,” he pauses to take it in properly. “Hold up, I’m coming to you.” He steps out from around the counter and approaches Hermann, who watches him warily. His hair’s short but it’s all stuck up. “You look,” he says, and licks his lips. “Mein Gott.”

“Yes, well,” says Hermann, shifting away uncomfortably.

“No! It looks good.”

“I told the woman not do to this,” he mutters. “I think it looks preposterous. I wanted something low-maintenance, and she gives me this monstrosity.” He lifts a hand to touch his hair and thinks better of it. Newton wants to run his hands over it. He wants to know if it’s long enough that he can pull on it. He imagines the shock on Hermann’s face if he ever did that.

“Just get me a coffee,” Hermann says. “I have a meeting I have to get to.”

“You look,” he doesn’t know if he should say this, but he decides that he will. “Super fucking hot. Coffee on the house for you, today.”

Hermann blushes and does not meet his eyes, not until Newton is back behind the counter.

“What about cake?”

“Free cake? No. Maybe if you get some new clothes. Chuck, what’s the status report?”

“Still leaking.”

“Can we get the handsome Doctor a coffee?”

Chuck grumbles loudly, but nods.

That night Hermann has a shower before bed and his hair ends up flattened down against his skull, so when Newton sees him the next day he’s more than a little disappointed. Hermann isn’t offered another free coffee.


	13. Florence

He walks into the cafe and he cannot hear anything. He is afraid his eardrums have just burst.

“What is that racket?” he shouts, before he can consider that it is not his place to complain about the atmosphere of a place he already - no, not hates. Dislikes. Immensely. But he doesn’t hate the cafe.

He doesn’t hate the cafe because the coffee smells bitter and strong, and because there is Newt.

If it was his lab he would have just reached out with his cane to smash the machine, but it’s not so he just seethes at Newt, whose mouth is moving but the words are lost to the music. Raleigh leans over the top of Newt to turn it down.

“Oi! Whatcha do that for?” cries Newt.

“Dude, it’s a bit loud. Cafe, not a club. Latte?” he says this to Hermann, who nods and hands over the correct change, warm from his hand.

“Could be both,” sniffs Newt.

Hermann chuckles, which draws Newt’s ire.

“Dude, what’s up your ass?” asks Newt. “I know you don’t like music, but come on.”

“I like music, just not that horrendous trash.”

“That’s not trash, that’s German!”

“Merely because I was born in the same country as something’s origin does not mean that that something is worth anything.” He glares down at Newt. “Case in point.”

“Aw, you love me,” says Newt. “Why else do you keep coming back here?”

“The proximity of this cafe to my office is fortuitous. Do not mistake that for -”

“Dude, dude!” cries Newt, rolling his eyes. He has to jump a little to snatch the iPod down off the speakers. “Easy there. Tell me one concert you’ve been to,” he says, fingers hovering over the screen.

“I don’t see what spending exorbitant amounts of money to stand in a big dark hall has to do with appreciating music.”

“You kiddin’ me?” cries Newt, and Hermann wonders if maybe it would have been better to not complain about the music. Newt’s voice is loud and screeching and he flinches at it. “Because that’s how you enjoy music! Too many people and sweat and the lights! And the bass always too loud rattling your lungs and -”

“You know better than I that lungs do not _rattle_ ,” interrupts Hermann.

“I bet you’ve never been to a concert. I bet you’ve only ever been to the orchestra. Wearing your old man clothes and -”

“I have,” snaps Hermann. “In Berlin.”

“Yeah?” Newt’s a little brighter all of a sudden, perking up his ears like a dog and looking eagerly at Hermann. He’s running through various German bands he knows and wondering which one Hermann could have seen. He’s thought of a dozen different names and is just staring at Hermann, not blinking, before he thinks to ask. “Who was it?”

Hermann grinds his teeth, because he doesn’t want to share, this is his, his own.

“Florence and the Machine.”

His leg had been hurting too much to stand and so he’d not been close to the stage. He’d sat, feeling proper and awkward and out of place amongst the other people his age who were all somehow so much younger and freer than he could ever be. He’d felt, as always, absolutely wrong. Foolish for attempting anything so out of line of his usual way of life. An unwanted variable shoved into the incorrect equation.

And then Florence Welch had come onto the stage and everything had changed.

“Oh?” Newt sounds a little wistful, dragging it out, _oh-h-h_. “She’s… magical.”

Hermann can only agree but he does not want to. Logically, of course, he knows that her music does not belong to him, but he still feels as though it’s his, his private secret.

Newt’s nerdish love of celebrities is just another mark against him, but if Hermann were being honest with himself, well, if Florence Welch called him to battle he’d go without question.

“She has got it goin’ on,” adds Newt, a more familiar expression passing over his face. Hermann scowls.

“That is…” To call it blasphemy was most accurate, but too close to giving Newt more ammunition against him. ‘Absolutely vulgar’ was next on his tongue, but still, too close. “Gross,” he said.

“But true,” grins Newt. He looks back down at his ipod and picks a song. “For you,” he says, and turns to serve a customer.

It takes a second or two for the song to start but when it does Hermann can’t really stop the small smile that starts on his face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Breath of Life - Florence and the Machine


	14. 14.0

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise, Actual Events are going to happen soon. Not this chapter. But, soon.

Hermann’s sitting in the cafe when the sun disappears. He takes off his reading glasses and rubs them on the handkerchief he keeps in his pocket. They come back slightly cleaner, but the cafe is still dim. He looks up, and sees two huge people taking up all the spare space.

The woman is monstrous in her own right but tiny beside the man. The man is a troll. A handsome, chiselled troll. Hermann is equal parts terrified and turned on by both of them, though the latter might be a confused remembrance of watching Newt make a coffee while pretending to read his novel.

“Two large blacks,” says the woman.

“You wanna say that again?” exclaims Stacker, and Hermann’s never seen him smile as widely as he’s smiling now. “It’s been too long. On the house - Newt?” Hermann’s head automatically jerks around at the man’s name.

“On it!” he says cheerfully.

“Aleksis, Sasha, sit, sit!” Stacker walks around the counter and slings an arm around the man’s shoulders - or, tries to, and ends up merely patting him mid-back. “How are you?”

Hermann has no idea where to look. The couple drag his eyes to them, slightly familiar and demanding his attention, but Newt is making coffee. As always he’s doing it distractedly, starting on one task and then switching to another, finding mugs and wiping up a spill, moving a dirty plate to the pile at the back of the cafe and returning to grind the coffee.

His forearms are bright colours and it’s hard to see the shape of the skin beneath. Hermann’s been staring so long that he scarcely sees the colour.

He remembers being twelve going on thirteen sitting beside a boy in Hebrew school and looking at his hands. He had the nicest hands, slender brownish fingers as though he’d been playing in dirt just minutes before. He held the pencil so delicately, and Hermann was not the sort of boy at that sort of age to think of crude connotations, but that image stuck with him for a very long time.

He remembered being a little older and listening to girls talk about boys, talk about their eyes and their smiles and, later, their abs, their butts, and Hermann has always wondered if he’s a little odd for noticing hands, forearms, the line of the neck plunging down beneath collar.

He watches Newt, the tension of muscles beneath his skin as he twists the group handle into place. If he were Newt he’d remember the names of the muscles but he does not, he can only estimate at the levels of force required, tension in the muscle cells, pulses of electricity rushing through the synapses. He can only watch and remember he is in a public place and he must remember to blink, must not lick his lips.

Newt is not his to touch.

He is not even his to watch.

He turns back to his novel and his cup of coffee, past lukewarm, and starts violently at a figure beside him.

He smells like fire and flowers, and he’s looking at the yellow paperback in his hands.

“Is that book by Tessa Kansas?” he asks. His voice is like marble. “Is it very good?”

He stares into a face equal parts brunette and blond. Hermann stutters a moment, lost between thoughts of Newt and vague worry about the largeness of these people. He’s not claustrophobic, but he can feel them pressing down into his space.

“It is,” he says. His fingers itch. He remembers, once, being sixteen and smoking. It was one of his last attempts at fitting in, but between the cane and estimating the particular angle of Newt’s wrist Hermann was never going to fit in. Still, now, a decade and a lifetime later, his fingers itch for a cigarette. “I am not familiar with her other works, but this is very good.” He fiddles with the corner of the page in his book, and watches Newt. “It’s about fairytales and astronomy.” Newt’s talking to Jacintha, laughing, words lost to the noise of the coffee and the conversation between Stacker and Sasha.

Aleksis follows his gaze.

“You know Newt?” He says the name as though Newt really is a small amphibian that he just, perhaps, found in his glass of water and is now examining with tender care.

“Newt and I are… acquainted,” he manages. We’re friends, he wants to say. He wants to tell someone. We’re friends.

“Do you know what his tattoos mean? I always ask and he never says.”

“No.”

“I think they’re very interesting.”

“No,” Hermann repeats, because they’re not, they’re not going to be, he’s hated tattoos since his last year of high school, being shoved against the wall by a boy with a black-lined spider beneath his ear.

“You cannot help what you are attracted to,” says Aleksis. His voice is still like marble but the cafe is tiny and crowded and loud. Hermann has to tilt his head to hear him properly. “There are no rules.”

Hermann doesn’t answer. Aleksis gets the coffee from the counter and somehow manages to fit beside Sasha and Stacker at the low bench on the other side of the cafe. Hermann returns to reading.

Of course there are rules. There has to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so into smoking Hermann. Like, so into it. But also I'm very anti smoking and I doubt Hermann would ever actually do something so unhealthy. A happy medium was reached here.


	15. Rain

It’s raining. It’s raining and it’s the first time it’s rained, properly rained, since he moved into the new building.

The roof leaks.

There’s a steady drip-drip right onto his desk, and he’s so very glad that he keeps his computer on the other side of the room and takes his laptop home. There’s some smudged equations on the board but he’s got copies of those, and he gets to the office in time to rescue the papers from his drawer.

He takes his laptop and he takes his papers and he goes to the staffroom, except that several other people have had the same idea, so he tries the lounge on the next level down, and that’s got (shudder) numerical analysts loitering, as if they don’t have perfectly dry offices to spend time in, so he goes back to his office and gets his parka. With that safely covering most of him he puts his things in a bag and goes down the street.

The cafe is full. The outside tables are dripping, the seats are stacked, unused, under an awning. There are too many people Hermann cannot get inside.

He stands for a few minutes at the end of what might be a line for the counter, or it might just be a congregation of people. There is rain dripping onto his shoulder. Then, with a growl, he turns and decides to cut his losses and go home. He can do work there; he can’t do work standing outside the cafe in the rain.

He turns down the street and passes by the window of the cafe, where it’s so full that Hermann’s almost surprised that people aren’t climbing on top of each other. Even without his leg he’d want no part of that. People don’t touch him, and he doesn’t touch people, and sometimes it’s lonely but mostly Hermann likes the space. He’s an island all alone in the world and it might not be happier that way but it sure as hell is easier.

It’s slow going in the rain because his leg his hurting all the way up to his hip, pain so strong that it’s curling through so that it feels like it’s lancing at his groin and his kidneys and he wants nothing more than to sit down. He hobbles, there’s no other word for it. He hobbles, and with the rain and the agony in his muscles and his bones he does not hear the shouts behind him.

“Goddammit, Gottlieb -” pants Newt. “Jesus, you move fast.”

Hermann turns and raises an eyebrow. “I move fast?”

Newt does that blinking thing that people do when they realise they’ve stepped too close to talking about something that is not to be discussed. “Yeah well. Coffee? Latte? I threw another shot in so the foam’s not pretty at all, but that’s how you like it. Two shots and nothing pretty.”

Hermann blinks, and in that moment sees himself stepping up to Newt, using his height to lean down over him, trail fingers over his jaw and murmur, “I like some pretty things.”

Newton’s lips would taste fresh like rain and slightly bitter.

But. He doesn’t.

He blinks again, water in his eyelashes.

“You ran here, in the rain, to give me stolen coffee?” He presumes it’s stolen, since Newton could not possibly have made a coffee that fast for him.

Newt waves a hand. “Raleigh’ll make ‘em another. It’s cool. Saw you through the window. Come here, get out of the rain,” he says, stepping sideways under an awning. “Couldn’t have you not getting your caffeine fix. Sorry it’s hectic, cold weather gets everyone out and wanting. What’s your name?”

“Pardon?”

“Your name. I’ve known you for months and all I know is Gottlieb. And Gottlieb is not your first name. Unless your parents are as weird as mine.” He waves a hand down the street. “I felt a bit stupid, yelling your last name like you’re some city-born jock.”

“I’m not named after an amphibian, if that’s what you’re thinking,” snaps Hermann.

“And you think I am?” snorts Newt. “No wonder you haven’t been taking me seriously.” Herman raises an eyebrow and Newt laughs. “I’m Newton, properly. Newton Gottlieb.”

They stare at each other. Hermann blinks first, and Newton realises.

“Oh shit.” He nearly throws the coffee away in his effort to clamp his hand over his mouth. “Shit, did I just say that? Geiszler. Newton Geiszler.” He holds out the coffee. “Fuck. Just take the fuck-,” he shoves the coffee into Hermann’s hand. “Goodbye. Forever.” He turns and hurries away up the street. He’s cursing to himself.

Hermann stares at the coffee cup. It’s splashed through the hole in the lid.

“Hermann!” he calls. He swallows down the automatic honorific ‘Doctor’, and repeats, “Hermann Gottlieb.” Newton half turns. “Have a good weekend.”

There’s a long pause filled with heavy rain, and then Newton raises his hand in a sort of salute. Hermann smiles and turns, bringing the coffee to his lips. 


	16. take a beat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today's chapter is kind of short but I just want to say something. I think I've read every single Hermann/Newton fic on AO3. Sure there's probably some I've accidentally skipped or I didn't enjoy the writing or Hannibal Chau was involved or they weren't a main pairing. But there are 1035 fics under that tag and I am finding it difficult to find new ones. I'm sad in a manner I am not entirely certain how to express.
> 
> I'd also like to say that I've finished writing this and there'll be a total of 25 chapters. I raised the rating from general to teen but it won't go up again. 
> 
> Your comments keep my self-esteem above basement level and this week's description of Hermann Gottlieb is inspired by shawskankredemption's descriptions of Burn Gorman. Burn is a total babe and I don't know why, but I've learned to not question it and just enjoy the slightly fevered dreams of beautiful hands and weirdly angled face-bones. There are not enough photos of his legs. I wonder if he's ever done a photoshoot to advertise watches.

Hermann imagines ringing up his sister and asking her what it means when a man tells you his name, but puts your surname as his.

He imagines Karla laughing until the phone breaks, so he doesn’t.

 

Newton’s moods are all over the place, all weekend. One moment up - Hermann didn’t reject him! Hermann didn’t laugh at him! Hermann told him to have a good weekend! - and the next moment down.

Newton’s done a lot of embarrassing shit in his life. He’s never done something like this.

He spends the rest of Friday being insufferable, and he knows that if Stacker were there he’d have been sent home. Stacker’s done that before, on days where the manic in manic-depressive is really letting itself be known (if the depressive is bringing itself to the foreground it’s rare that he’ll actually get as far as work). But neither Chuck nor Raleigh have the power to do that, so they have to suffer through. He doesn’t tell them what’s up, though. He cringes a lot and at every new person through the door he flinches in case it’s Hermann come back to laugh at him, but it never is and he never does, and as soon as he’s off work he tells Tendo that he’s coming over.

Tendo is a very good friend who laughs at him a lot, and then proceeds to kick his arse at table tennis before his wife comes home and tells them both off for not making dinner.

“He’s just… He’s so… He’s so ugly,” says Newton, later, as he helps Tendo with the dishes. “He’s got the ugliest face, he’s like a waxy trout-faced… cathedral. You could use his face to cut steel. And he’s always angry. He’s the angriest person I know.”

“What about that white guy you work with? The mean one.”

“Nah, he’s not like Chuck. Hermann, he’s all…” Newton doesn’t know how to explain it. Hermann rubs him the wrong way, his clothes and his mathematics and the way he tries to pretend he doesn’t need his cane. He wants to scream at Hermann, and he wants to rip off those clothes and… “He’s prickly. Like nothing ever goes right for him so he’s just decided to preemptively get mad and stay mad.”

“So you decided to fall in love.”

Newton pauses in drying a plate. “Fuck. I did. I am. How did you know?”

“You told me you loved Amber two weeks after meeting her. You’ve been telling me about this guy for, what is it, months?” It’s been four months since Hermann first showed up at the coffee shop, and Newton very nearly blurts that out to Tendo, who gives him a knowing look anyway. “I would be surprised if you weren’t in love.”

“Is he talking about the mathematician?” calls Alison, from the next room. She comes and stands in the doorway, toddler on her hip. “Just kiss him. Solves every question. If he’s not into it you apologise.”

“Kiss him?” cries Newton. “I scarcely touch him!”

“Oh,” says Alison in a knowing sort of tone. “Physical phobias. Well. Ask him if you can kiss him. And then kiss him.”

“What if he says no?”

Tendo looks Newton up and down in a manner absolutely unbecoming given the proximity of his wife, but it’s Alison who answers. “He won’t.”


	17. 16

Hermann walks into the coffee shop feeling, for once, that he has the upper hand. It’s not him afraid that his infatuation will show. It’s Newton who’s embarrassed.

Hermann’s never had someone be embarrassed around him. Embarrassed for him, perhaps, but not embarrassed for their own actions.

“Coffee. Black, today,” he says. He works hard to keep his voice the usual clipped cadence that it always is. It’s difficult.

He Googled Newton.

He’s never wanted to suck someone off more than he wants to right now.

Alternatively, he wants to fall inside Newton’s brain, devour his manner of thinking and just… exist.

He wants to exist in Newton’s brain.

“Two shots?” asks Newton, and his voice is more high-pitched than normal, almost squeaking. “You always have two shots, I need to stop asking. We should get you your own spot on the list, mathematician special, double shot always. I mean, we already have an extra shot button, but this way it would be yours. Special. Um. For you.” He trails off. (He’s thinking of Tendo’s advice, but it’s entirely inappropriate given the counter separating them. He considers jumping across it and just smooshing his face against Hermann’s, but that wouldn’t work either. Hermann would reject him merely from the lack of privacy.)

He falters, hands over the buttons of the till. “Hey, are we good, dude? After… After last week?”

For a moment Hermann almost draws it out, but Newton is poised and worried. He relents. “Yes, Newton. We’re good.”

Newton visibly relaxes, and almost just as quickly stands up straight and glares. “Oi! It’s not Newton. It’s Newt. No one calls me Newton.”

“I should be calling you Doctor. I looked up your name. You are…” If he were Newton he would say ‘hot stuff’, or something equally uncouth. “Impressive.”

Newton preens a moment. “Damn right I am! But you are not calling me Doctor. I will cease to serve you if you call me Doctor. You start calling me Doctor and then someone will fall over with, a... a collapsed lung! And you’ll be expecting me to get a pen and stab them through the chest or something to get them going again. I ain’t doin’ that, dude. Even for you.”

“Even though you married yourself to me?” asks Hermann, leaning heavily on his cane and sneering a little. He’s having fun with this.

Newton glares, and the intensity makes Hermann a little giddy. “You said we were good! They both start with G. I was thinking about your name, it’s a natural mistake!”

“I very much doubt that you could reasonably prove that.”

“Whatever, dude. Chuck, make him his damn drink. I’m going to work. Because unlike some people here, I have a job that actually affects people.”

“I am studying the very nature of the universe!”

“Like that’s important. Sit down,” says Newton, while Hermann splutters. The only chair available is one of the low ones, so Hermann does not obey, but he does step back to let the teenager behind order her coffee.

“I fail to see how this is more important than what I’m doing,” he continues, when Newton’s attention is free again.

“What were you doing the other day? Asymptotic optimisation of singularly perturbed control systems and Markov decision processes? What in god’s name does that even mean?”

Hermann’s more surprised that he remembered the title of the research. It’s not something even he bothers remembering; he’s not sure that Rachel can blurt out the title without using cue cards.

“At least I’m doing something.”

“Yeah,” says Chuck, pushing in front of Newton. “Makin’ you coffee, grandpa.”

Hermann takes the coffee that’s offered him.

“I’m not a - I’m as old as -” He closes his eyes and grits his teeth. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” He pauses, and narrows his eyes at Newton. “If you’re lucky.”


	18. 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been titling the chapters with whatever I titled them when I wrote them. This was originally chapter 7. I was very sick while writing this, suffered due to circumstances leaving me with a house empty of food that wouldn't take more than a few moments of standing up, and wrote the entirety of this story because watching TV hurt my ears.

Hermann wakes up the next day, stumbles into the kitchen and it’s only after he’s stared at the microwave that he discovers that he’s late. He doesn’t set an alarm, too used to waking up at the same hour every day that he never requires it anymore. He feels bleary-eyed and foggy-brained, and he texts Harley to say he won’t be in and goes back to bed.

He doesn’t sleep well, and wakes up hungry. He eats yesterday’s leftovers and debates the crust of his last bit of bread. If he had known he was going to be sick he would have stocked up on quick-to-prepare meals, but he’s neglected the shopping and now suffering for it. It’s times like these that he wishes he had a person to look after him. Someone to make him a cup of tea and rub his back. At least, after all these years, he’s learned how to cope alone.

He takes the next day off, too, managing to get so far as the couch. He rewatches Lord of the Rings, half dozing and dreaming horrid dreams of oliphuants. He has a headache that lingers, his whole body feels heavy, the pain in his hip decides to take a vacation and visits the rest of his body. The third day he about crawls into work where the numbers don’t make sense, so he makes a feeble attempt at rearranging his grad students for a few days and goes back home.

 

 

 

Work’s going slow. Newton taps his fingers on the counter-top and stares at the door, willing a new customer to come in. Most of the seats are full but everyone’s got a drink.

“Hey, man, want a coffee? I’m gonna make a coffee.”

“I think I’ll take my break early,” says Raleigh. “Meant to be meeting a couple friends across town.”

“Yeah, yeah…” says Newton. His eyes are on the door. Raleigh looks at him carefully. “Oh, yeah, sure, go. Go! I’ll be fine. It’s weirdly quiet. You’d think, without Chuck or Stacker they’d be flocking to the door.”

Raleigh laughs, washing off his hands and pushing down his sleeves.

“No mathematician yet today?”

“No,” says Newton, though that’s not the whole reason he keeps looking at the door. He turns, spins, moves a couple cups around and looks for something to clean. He doesn’t like standing still.

Raleigh says goodbye and Newton’s left alone. He likes working alone, because it means no one messes with his methods. He starts here and goes over there and wipes up another mess and a customer arrives so he’s distracted, and the coffee he started for himself isn’t finished for another twenty minutes and then it’s nearly cold before he remembers it, so he adds some ice and Hermann still hasn’t come in, but a woman with pink hair does and she’s chatty and friendly and distracts him from everything for half an hour. Raleigh returns, which is another distraction, and the day ends without a mathematician but he’s got his Xbox waiting at home, so at least there’s that. 


	19. 8

“Hah!” Hermann flinches, one foot in the doorway and the rest of him still outside the cafe. “I knew you’d be back!” Newton is advancing on him with a plate in one hand and a mug in the other. Everyone is staring, and Hermann hates it when people stare at him.

He has no idea how he manages to teach a class full of students. Newton stands just inside the cafe and Hermann stands just outside.

“Keep -” he clears his throat, still a bit sick. “Keep it down, Dr Geiszler. You’re disturbing the customers.”

“Don’t call me that. It’s Newt,” says Newton.

“I take it that is not for me,” says Hermann, looking down his nose at the things Newton is carrying. Reminded of his job Newton sidesteps Hermann to deliver the order.

As soon as that is done Newton is back and close and loud. Or, perhaps his voice is at a regular volume and Hermann’s not very good at processing it today.

“You tried to keep away but you couldn’t! I knew it! Didn’t I tell you?” he calls back. Stacker gives him a severe look, which Newton disregards. “Missed me much?” Hermann glares, and Newton peers up at him. “Hey, dude, are you alright? You don’t look so great.”

“I have been ill. Hence my… sabbatical.”

“Aw, that sucks dude! Come inside, sit down. You!” he snaps at a woman on a stool. “Get off, let this man sit down.” She sees the cane and immediately gathers her things to move.

“You really don’t have to - Dr Geiszler, please-”

“It’s Newt. And you will. Sit. Coffee. Food. Lemon tart. Stacker! Black coffee double shot and a lemon tart for Hermie.”

“Hermie?” Hermann hisses. “I should walk right out of here and never return.”

That threat makes Newton pause, then he laughs. “Nah, you won’t. If you didn’t before you won’t now.”

Hermann cannot fault him that logic. “I have work to return to. Taking half a week off does nothing for progress. If you could actually do your job, now.”

Newton chuckles, and begins on his coffee.


	20. ??

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OCs because Herman deserves if not friends, friend-type people.
> 
> and omygosh there are over 100 kudos on this thing now? guys no no. There are better things out there. Go and read Anthology or Infinite Regress, Under Duress or that vampire coffee shop AU (Blood and Pumpkin Spice) or (I Think I Like) What I Don't Know About You which has a summary that makes me giggle every single time
> 
> I am honoured and thankful and appreciative and I hope you enjoy the last few chapters of this.

Harley fist-pumps the air.

“We did it! See that, we did it! Charlie, Felicity!” He grins and does a little dance, and everyone’s laughing. The paper’s finished and drafted and published and printed. “Dr Gottlieb,” says Harley, turning and grinning. “This is great. This is so great. Look!” His voice squeaks as he turns to point at the first line. “My name. My name, first author.” He jabs the screen and the pixels go fuzzy under his finger. “Drinks, tonight. Down at the Winston. Yes? Charlie, Felicity? Yes? Hermann, you too,” he adds with a severe frown. “You aren’t getting out of it this time. Bring your boyfriends, girlfriends, I’ve got to go tell Rachel.”

The Winston is a bar that Hermann might admit to perhaps tolerating. The music is not too loud and the tables are set far enough apart that he doesn’t feel trapped. He wears semi-new trousers - old jeans that he’s worn only once or twice - and a jacket that fits too tightly for him to be comfortable writing on the chalkboard in class. Here, in the dim light of the bar, it hugs him comfortingly.

He drinks one beer too fast because he’s thirsty and the second because Rachel bought it for him and it tastes good, and he promises himself that he’ll nurse his third one for the rest of the night.

This promise fails.

He drinks it fast and then he gets into an argument with Harley about dark matter, for which they both demand napkins from the bar and begin writing their own arguments out on the thin paper.

He doesn’t talk very often to very many people, but neither do these guys and so their conversation is not gossip or whatever else other people talk about.

Charlie and Felicity are talking about irrational numbers and Ryan, as he always does after a drink or two, is complaining to anyone who’ll listen (Carmen, because she’s into him, and Kaoru, because he’s into Ryan, too) that his research into travelling waves in advection-reaction-diffusion models was better than that _bastard_ Hyan down in Seoul. Carmen nods and Kaoru shifts his chair a little closer to Ryan’s, and then there’s a loud noise that cuts across everything.

“Hermann!”

“Dr Gottlieb, please,” he snaps, without looking up.

“Hermie, come on,” and Hermann looks up with a snarl ready in his throat to see Newton looking down at him with a grin on his face.

“You will not call me that.”

“Yeah, you gotta call him Doctor. It’s his thing,” says Harley.

“It’s not my thing,” says Newt.

“Don’t you have your own friends who’ll be missing your excellent company?” snaps Hermann, hoping that he doesn’t. Newton waves a hand towards an indiscriminate cluster of people.

“They don’t need me. Is this a horde of nerds?”

“Yes, it is. You’ll fit right in, Newton.”

“Is that Newton as in _Newton_?” asks Carmen.

“Yeah, but call me Newt. Physics isn’t my deal. Alright, I’ll sit,” he says, as though he had to be bullied into it. “Whatcha talkin’ about?”

 

 

Two - three? Ten? For someone who counts for a living Hermann’s doing very poorly this evening - some number of hours later Hermann’s on his Nth beer, and Newton is trying to steal it.

“Newton, no,” he repeats. “Hands off.”

“But mine’s finished and the bar - the bar is so far away.”

It’s difficult to tell if Newton is drunk or if this is just what he’s like when Hermann’s not so… Hermann-like. Newton’s leaning against his arm, and Hermann hasn’t pushed him off. Newton’s hand is smooth and warm each time Hermann slaps his hand from his drink. He smells like coffee and cologne and beer.

Between demanding more beer Newton is holding his own very well for a semi-retired biologist amongst mathematicians. Hermann’s a little proud. He’s not sure how he would have coped had Newton appeared unintelligent.

 

 

“Dude, you’re smart.” They waiting at the corner for a taxi. “I mean, they’re smart,” Newton points at the others, arguing amongst each other about splitting a cab. “But you, you’re a whole other level. It’s really, really…” He leans in and Hermann tenses, afraid and wanting and terrified of what might be about to happen. Then Newton leans away again, blinks and shakes his head. He mutters something to himself, German mixed with English, and Hermann doesn’t understand it either way.

A taxi comes and Hermann’s about to ask Newton if they live close enough to consider sharing, but Newton’s stepping back towards the group of friends he initially arrived with.

Right.

Feeling suddenly, bitterly sober, Hermann gets into the taxi, alone. He goes home, alone.

He dreams of Newton’s shoulder pressed up against his. 


	21. the touching thing

Newton is watching Hermann carefully as he steps through the cafe, dodging around one person and sidestepping another, bending his torso a little to keep from brushing up against someone who’s fiddling with a packet of sugar. He doesn’t even look as though he’s consciously doing it, it’s just an automatic process to avoid physical contact with anyone.

But, he definitely touched Newton last night.

“How’re you feeling?” he asks, pushing an espresso across.

“This isn’t mine,” says Hermann.

“One to take the edge off,” says Newton. “Latte today?”

“Please,” says Hermann. He eyes the espresso like it’s a live thing, and then decides to trust Newton and downs it in one smooth go. 

“You get home alright?”

Hermann gives him a withering look. “Of course.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Will I want to discuss this ‘something’ in here?”

“Probs not,” grins Newton, but it’s a nervous grin, loaded with hesitation. “Lemme finish your coffee.”

Hermann watches him, feeling stretched out and electrocuted, tired from the drunken sleep of the night before and awake from the espresso.

“The touching thing,” blurts Newton, as soon as they are outside and Hermann is sitting uncomfortably at one of the little rain-marked tables. “Is that, like, an always thing?”

“The touching thing?” asks Hermann.

“Oh, please don’t tell me this is something else you’ve not considered,” says Newton in a loud, almost aggressive voice. “You can’t be serious. You don’t like people touching you.”

“No,” says Hermann. “I don’t.”

“Okay,” says Newton. There’s a long pause. “But last night. You let me touch you.”

“That was hardly _touching_ , Newton. You were _leaning_ on me.”

“Which is touching. I just…” He studies his fingernails. “If that was wrong, I’m sorry. I don’t want to make you feel uncomfortable.”

“It was fine,” says Hermann. “I am perfectly capable of determining what is and what is not okay.”

“You were drinking.”

“You, of all people, are hardly going to take advantage of me,” says Hermann. “You’re irritating to the core but you are, at least, considerate.” He fiddles with his cane.

“But-”

“Cease your worrying, Newton.”

“Then, I - I was gonna,” he hesitates, changes the word to, “hug you last night. To say goodbye.”

“You merely have to ask,” says Hermann. In a gentler tone he continues, “I do not appreciate unsolicited physical contact, especially with strangers. But, when I’m… inebriated, or I am warned, or if it’s from a,” his tongue darts out to wet his lips, “a friend, I have no issues.”

“Oh. Sweet. So, can I, like, hug you?”

“Now?”

“To make up for last night’s,” says Newton, affronted. If he’s going to lie about wanting to _only_ hug the man he’s going to go all the way with it.

“Oh, alright.”

“I don’t wanna if you don’t wanna. Don’t make it sound like I’m forcing you into it. I don’t want to hug an unwilling partner.”

Hermann chuckles, and stands up, leaning his cane against the table. “Hug me.”

Newton steps close, and he breathes in, and Hermann smells like chalk and mothballs and strawberry jam. Newton wraps his arms around Hermann’s torso, their shoes knocking together and Hermann’s sweater vest scratching at Newton’s stubble. Hermann’s arms are solid and hold him tight, and Newton sighs and closes his eyes. Hermann settles his cheek against Newton’s hair, unwashed and messy, and tightens his grip.

They fit.

They fit perfectly.

It takes a while for the hug to become awkward, and then they both slowly disentangle themselves and Hermann blushes a little, picking up his cane and his coffee.

Newton is uncertain what words to grab onto to fill the silence.

“So, I’ll, uh, see you tomorrow?”

“It’s Saturday tomorrow.”

“So it is,” says Newton. “Well, uh. Monday?” he asks, at the same time that Hermann says, “You could see me anyway.”

Newton does not understand what he means. “I don’t work Saturdays.”

“Neither do I,” says Hermann. He lets the silence be drawn out.

“Do you mean,” Newton’s tongue darts out and wets his lips. “Um, like, you mean…?”

“I mean a date, Newton.” He has no idea where the words are coming from, and given the alarm on Newton’s face neither does he. He shifts his grip on his cane and plunges determinedly onward. “Would you like to have dinner with me tomorrow night?”

“You,” Newton pauses to fidget, hand sweeping his hair back though it wasn’t in his face. His voice is high-pitched and he stumbles fast over the words. “You want to go out on a date with me?”

It had not been his intention to ask Newton out today. It had not been his intention to ask Newton out, ever, and Newton has not said yes. This was going to be a lovely crush that somehow has not gone away despite the months since he’d first seen Newton, but now that the words are out he doesn’t know how to take them back and he isn’t sure that he wants to.

“Unless you do not want to,” says Hermann. He grins, mouth long and crooked, heart pounding in his chest. “I would not want an unwilling partner.”

“No! I mean, yeah. Hell yeah! Where?”

Hermann falters. He hasn’t been out in a very long time. The last personal entanglement he had been involved in had not been romantic at all.

“Do you have any recommendations?” he asks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now we all forgive Newton for not kissing Hermann last night.


	22. Goodness me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh haha I miscounted my chapters and am not confident in putting up a number. I think there are 6 chapters left to post but there is a reason I prefer macroanatomy to mathematics: the only things I need to count are ribs! (And nerve numbers and grooves and whatnot but you get me.)
> 
> I hope you enjoy this chapter. You have waited long enough for it.

Hermann tries to do his hair how the hairdresser did it that one time. He washes it and uses the hairdryer his sister left behind months ago, and then tries to carefully apply a little wax but “a little” in wax terms is apparently less than the pea-sized amount he used. The person staring back at him from the mirror looks as though they haven’t washed their hair in a month.

He wonders if he could just not pick Newton up. He could not pick Newton up and then never go back to the cafe, and very carefully and very quietly pretend like none of this ever happened.

He tries again.

He fails again.

He gives up and lets his hair do its thing, and wrangles together an outfit that isn’t too old-man-professor, and glares at himself in the mirror. There’s nothing he can do to fix his face - ugly mouth like gash across too-pale skin that looks as though it’s drooping, ears all wrong and cheekbones too sharp. Newton’s seen him before; he’s not going to be surprised at how he looks.

He wants to leave his cane behind but he doesn’t, because he’s not stupid, and he debates the pain-killers and decides that he’s probably safe for now. In any case, if Newton orders wine Hermann doesn’t want to refuse and then have to explain why he refused. His leg already causes him enough problems without that sort of casual embarrassment.

He picks Newton up and they don’t really talk on the drive, which makes Hermann very uncomfortable. He takes the handicapped park because he can, but then he thinks that maybe he shouldn’t have. It’s not as though Newton isn’t there to watch him awkwardly clamber out of the car, automatically hooking his hand around his thigh to help lever himself out while Newton’s already on the footpath bouncing on his toes.

The restaurant is small with white table clothes and thick napkins that Newton ignores and Hermann spreads carefully on his lap. Away from the coffee shop he feels horribly awkward, nothing to distract him into conversation or the excuse of his mathematics to help him leave. Usually he’d pick something to complain about, but he wants this to be nice. He wants to be nice. He’s never nice. He’s not sure he knows how to be.

He focuses on the menu, and he worries that the dinner is going to be spent in horrid silence that they both hurriedly leave from, and he’ll have to start ordering coffee from Chuck.

He forgets, of course, that he’s having dinner with Newton.

Newton lets silence reign for all of twenty-four seconds. “Usually on first dates you find out about the other person but I just realised I already know a lot about you. You like Florence Welch and you like space and mathematics and probabilities and you’re not really big on biology or chaos and you like routine but changing routine doesn’t bother you all that much, and you don’t like loud noises and I’ll bet you don’t like clubbing or parties where you don’t really know anyone, and you like the same books as I do, at least mostly.”

“Are you going to spend this entire evening blathering about yourself?” asks Hermann, and then he scowls at himself for his insults and scowls again for the scowl. He’s ruined it already. He might as well just get up and leave.

But Newton laughs. “Nah, too much talking for me. You tell me what you know and I’ll fill in the gaps.” They’re interrupted by a cheery woman who asks for their drink orders, and Hermann asks for wine and then looks expectantly at Newton, who shakes his head.

“Bottle of water for me. Like, a tonne of it.”

The server leaves them and Hermann tilts his head quizzically. “You don’t drink? I would have sworn you do.”

“I do drink. But today’s a bit of an up, so medication, alcohol,” he fades off. “I only had one glass the other night.”

“And half of mine.”

Newton shakes his head. “I’m very careful about that. You wouldn’t think it, but I can be careful, where it counts. But that’s not first-date material. So. What do you know?”

Hermann’s lost in thought, staring at Newton. Newton snaps his fingers in his face.

“Wakey, wakey, I’m not that boring already am I?” he demands, but his smile is tense and he does not know if Hermann’s having second thoughts already.

“You have five doctorates,” says Hermann, the first thing to come into his head that isn’t _what medication are you on?_ or _what is it for?_ “How old are you?”

“Twenty five.”

“And you have five doctorates?” Hermann exclaims. “That is ridiculous. You are a ridiculous man. How in god’s name did you manage five doctorates?”

“Alright, where to start? Okay, so, I finished high school when I was fourteen,” he begins, and he doesn’t shut up, scarcely closing his mouth long enough for Hermann to interject.

It’s somewhere during Newton’s first year of university that he pauses and stumbles. “I’m not sure what the word for it is,” he says, “uh, but it kind of means -”

Hermann interrupts sharply. “I’ve no doubt my German is far superior to yours, given I didn’t flee the country as soon as I was able.”

“Oh. Hey, yeah!” grins Newton. “Sweet!” and he begins to pepper his sentences with German, and Hermann wants, desperately, to complain about syntax but Newton’s speaking quickly with his hands moving and tattoos flashing beneath the cuffs of his sleeves. He’s never heard German spoken quite like this.

He hates it.

It’s beautiful, and he never wants it to stop.

He’s into dessert when he realises that he hasn’t mentioned anything about mathematics that wasn’t in passing - a simple comment on what research he might have been working on, but nothing specific, no numbers or theories or equations. He’s talked about himself, and he never knew before that there was so much to him that it could fill a whole evening and still leave him with things to say. Newton likes orange juice and Hermann does not, Hermann loves tea more than coffee, but without coffee he’s afraid he’ll never get through the day. Newton isn’t really a fan of coffee, preferring Red Bull, but he likes hot chocolates or iced caramel milkshakes, or mango smoothies.

“They’re not on the menu,” says Hermann, and Newton taps his nose and grins.

 

 

“That,” says Newton, pushing away his plate, “was delicious. How’s yours?” Hermann, who is midway through a mouthful, glares at him. “I know I said this isn’t first date material but I just gotta say something.” He looks expectantly at Hermann, who takes a second before he gets it, and swallows.

“My leg,” says Hermann, flatly, pushing his empty dessert plate away.

“Yes. I mean - no, actually. I’m a scientist and I’ve known you for ages and I wanna know. But not now. You don’t need to tell me now or ever but if you do I’ll probably get really biological on you. ‘Kay?” Hermann nods uncertainly. “I know some people just get a shit draw and their genetics bums them out or there’s an accident or just _something_ and it doesn’t make them less as a person - you’re gonna have to, I dunno, murder someone before I think less of you. I’m not going to treat you like crap because of, I don’t know, MS or ALS or a crushed coxa or whatever. Okay?” Newton breathes in, and breathes out, and folds his hands on the table. “Your leg is not a deal-breaker. In case that’s not obvious by the way that I said yes to dinner.”

Hermann nods, fingers around the stem of his wine glass, now empty. They’re lingering. He’s never had dinner and dessert and then _lingered_. “Thank you,” he says, and it feels false. “I mean that,” he adds. “I am grateful for how you have treated me.”

Newton grins proudly. “Thanks, dude, means a lot.”

“Must you call me ‘dude’?” asks Hermann, giving a scowl because he’s found it makes Newton smile and he likes that smile. “And ditto to you, with whatever it is,” Hermann waves a hand in a vague sort of gesture, “that you have.”

“ADHD and manic-depressive disorder,” says Newton, automatically. “But I was diagnosed really young. Really young. My whole life was kind of set on fast-forward so, like, don’t go thinking that I dropped academia because of it. Um. You might have noticed that some days I’m way up and then I’m not at work for a bit?” Hermann nods, suddenly understanding. “I don’t have a problem talking about it but other people do have a problem with it, they think that I’m this childish wreck three heartbeats from offing myself, and that’s never fun. I’m not, you know. Three heartbeats from that.”

“Good to know,” manages Hermann.

Newton laughs and calls the bill over, which he insists on paying since Hermann’s driving.

On the way back Newton fiddles with the radio while Hermann sits with his knuckles white around the steering wheel. Newton chatters about the music, criticising it all and finally turning it off, which leaves the car awfully silent.

Hermann wants Newton to invite him into his apartment even though he doesn’t think he should go; his leg is hurting and he knows that he’s not an easy body to deal with. It’s too early for any of that, not first-date material, as Newton said. But, he wants to kiss Newton and he doesn’t want to kiss Newton in the car. He wants to get out and walk him to the door, but getting out of the car takes an awkward amount of time.

Newton speaks at the same time as him.

“This was wonderful-”

“I had a great time-”

Hermann coughs, and Newton laughs.

“I wanna kiss you. Can I kiss you?” Hes leaning over the middle console of the car and Hermann leans away.

“No.”

Newton’s face falls. “I’m sorry. Fuck,” he reaches for the handle, and Hermann talks fast.

“I’d like to walk you to your door.”

“Jeez! Coulda said that before.” He continues on before Hermann can apologise, scarcely even pausing, scarcely even realising that Hermann might feel the need to apologise. “A true gentleman, huh? Should I wait for you to open my cardoor, too?”

“You can get out of the car yourself, insufferable brat,” says Hermann. Newton laughs, and they meet on the footpath. Newton bumps his arm against Hermann’s and then they’re at the door.

“I mean it,” says Newton. “I had a great time.”

“As I was trying to say before,” says Hermann, “this was wonderful. I didn’t know you had it in you to be civil for an entire evening.”

“We should do this again, then, huh?”

“I would enjoy that,” says Hermann, and Newton chuckles at something Hermann does not see as humorous, and sidles closer.

“Can I kiss you now?” he asks.

In answer Hermann just leans down and presses his lips against Newton’s. It’s been a while since he did it and he forgets, for a split second, what he’s meant to be doing. Newton’s nose bumps his, and they both laugh, softly, and readjust, Newton sighing and pressing close against him, chest to chest. He tastes sweet and soft and absolutely unlike how he acts, like a quiet insidious thing that Hermann isn’t sure if he likes. He can feel Newton’s nervousness, and that, more than anything, makes him relax. He puts one hand on Newton’s back, pulls him closer and runs his tongue over Newton’s lower lip.

“Until next time?” asks Newton, pulling away reluctantly.

“Good night.” Hermann kisses him again.

“Drive safe,” breathes Newton. He reaches up to take another kiss, and Hermann pushes him away.

“I am leaving,” he says, clearly. “Good night.”

Newton laughs, and watches him go. He licks his lip and tastes Hermann, can feel Hermann’s hand on his back. He laughs, giddy and unable to relax, and he doesn’t go to sleep until the sun is starting to wake up. 


	23. Monday

By Monday Hermann’s talked himself out of it. It’s a pity shag - or not a shag, whatever, it’s pity or a mistake or, or. It’s not desire. He looks at himself in the mirror and he hates what he sees, and he cannot imagine that Newton will do anything other than apologise and ask that their relationship remain coffee-shop friendly.

He goes to the office and checks his emails, and finds the first in the weekly round between his siblings. They email each other once a week, a short update on their life. Karla’s started this week, and Hermann goes automatically to type a response but he feels that he should say something about Newton. He doesn’t know what to say.

_I met a man who I like very much, he’s German and was a neuroscientist, and I don’t think he likes me very much at all._

Only.

Newton did kiss him.

(He considers typing a bit more honestly: _I don’t think I deserve to be liked very much._ But he doesn’t talk that way to his family. He doesn’t talk that way to anyone.)

Nartesh knocks on his door then, one of Harley’s students, and he’s reminded that he is wanted, at least here.

He wants to get coffee and he also doesn’t want to get coffee, he wants to see Newton but he’s worried. It was all so much easier when he didn’t actually talk to the man.

He picks up his cane and makes to stand up, and then his email dings so he has a reasonable excuse to put it of for a little while. But, there’s hours before lunch and he’s gotten used to coffee with his morning tea. And Newton will wonder why he's not there.

He enters the cafe with some trepidation to find Newton busy at the back of the store with the toasting machines and Stacker and Jacintha twisting around each other. There’s a short line, which is normal, and Hermann joins the back of it.

“Morning,” says Jacintha. It’s cheerful, despite the gothic appearance. He gives a curt nod. “What’ll you have?”

“Latte, two shots, and a,” he glances at the board. “Piece of brownie.”

“Good choice. Brownie’s good today.” Stacker makes a low rumbling noise. “It’s always good, but today it’s -”

“Hermann!” cries Newton. He’s got a plate in each hand and steps around the counter. “Be with you in a second.”

“Uh, certainly,” he says. He fiddles with his wallet and smiles at Jacintha, and has no idea how he’s meant to greet Newton. Newton solves that problem for him by sticking both his hands into his pockets and standing with a good few inches between them. Which is impressive, given the lack of empty space in the tiny cafe.

“How are you?”

Newton never asks such inane questions, and it irritates Hermann. “Well enough.” He fiddles with his cane. “And you?”

“Pretty alright.”

There’s more silence.

“Hey, uh, Newt’s friend. You eatin’ here?” calls Jacintha. Hermann looks at Newton, who shrugs.

“There’s space at the bar,” he says.

“I didn’t bring any work.”

“Oh, well.”

Jacintha taps the counter impatiently, and Hermann quickly decides.

“No, I am afraid I will not be.”

Newton deflates a little, but if it’s in relief or if he’s disappointed Hermann cannot tell.

He takes his brownie and his coffee and he leaves.

 

 

Hermann always works late, so when he looks up to see that it’s gone five he’s not surprised, he only gets up and goes to make himself another cup of tea. He comes back and resumes his work, and a little later there’s a knock on the door.

“Come in!”

The handle twists and the door doesn’t move, so Hermann sighs and pushes away from his desk with his good leg to open the door from his side. He finds himself staring up into Newton’s face.

He says nothing, too startled to speak.

“Aren’t you going to invite me in? That’s a bit rude,” says Newton. Hermann stutters and pushes off the wall to wheel back to his desk.

“What are you doing here?” he exclaims. “This is my office.”

“Uh, duh, I know. Your name’s on the door. It was awkward at the cafe so I wanted to come see what that was all about. I mean, it was awkward, wasn’t it? That wasn’t just me, cos sometimes it is and I don’t always know how to respond to things. So maybe it was me?”

“It wasn’t you.”

“If it was me I’m sorry.”

“Newton!” he snaps. “It was not you.”

“I thought maybe it was a mistake.” His voice is horribly quiet. “That you thought it was a mistake.” He’s not looking at Hermann, and Hermann has to do something. He lifts himself up from his chair and puts his hand on Newton’s shoulder - awkwardly, not quite certain how to splay his fingers out over the leather of Newton’s jacket - and meets Newton’s eyes.

“No, it’s not. It was not a mistake. I just,” he looks at his hand, his knuckles pinker than the back of his hand, his nails short so that no dirt can catch under them. “I’m not good at this.”

“Dude, same! I’ve never had a… a person before.”

Hermann raises an eyebrow. “A person?”

“A boyfriend,” Newton corrects. Hermann’s still glaring a little. “A partner? Significant other? Come on, dude, work with me.”

“I have never had any sort of significant romantic relationship,” he says, and immediately, “I must correct myself. I have never had any sort of romantic relationship.” He would add that he’s not had so much as a friend for several years, but he’s afraid that Newton will take that as a reason to step back and away forever. He licks his lips. “I have no idea how to handle myself, or what sort of behaviour is appropriate…”

“Dude, dude, breathe! I dunno how to do this either! Just be the same as before. I just might wanna kiss you a bit more often - no, that’s probably a lie. I’ll probably _ask_ to kiss you more often.”

“An increase on zero-” Newton cuts him off.

“Are we cool, dude? I want us to be cool.”

“Yes, Newton,” he says “I believe we are… cool.”

“Good! And tomorrow you’ll come to the cafe like normal and you’ll have coffee and do maths and I’ll talk too loudly and this weekend we’ll go out again, okay? Do it properly, real dates. Get to know each other inside and out and no sex ‘til the wedding. Not even any French kissing ‘til the wedding!”

“I’m sure that’s a promise you have every intention of keeping,” says Hermann sarcastically, hoping that Newton is joking, hoping that this unfamiliar desire to be close to a person isn't just him, that Newton wants, too.

“Well, having said that, I gotta ask, have you had dinner yet?”

“It is not yet six o’clock.”

“Do you wanna have dinner? With me, that is. I presume you’ll want to eat sometime in the near future, but you could do that with me.”

“I have work,” says Hermann, gesturing at his computer. The screen saver has covered up his equations.

“Okay,” says Newton, shrugging. “When will you be done? Or could I go get pizza and come back? We can have a picnic! An office picnic!”

“I do not eat pizza.”

“Chinese?”

Newton looks hopeful and cheerful and so honest in his desire to spend time with Hermann that he relents. “I am partial to dumplings.”

“Awesome! I’ll go home, wash the coffee off, get dumplings and come back here. Cool?”

“If I have to smell like university you have to smell like coffee,” says Hermann.

Newton blinks, and laughs. “You like the coffee.” He leans in close, slowly, so that Hermann can shy away if he wants. “Okay. I’ll get dumplings.” He presses a quick kiss to Hermann’s cheek, mostly to see if Hermann will let him. Hermann does, and then turns his head and kisses him on the lips. Newton smiles, beautifully. “See you soon.” 


	24. 23?

Newton peers over Hermann’s shoulder as he clears up the space next to him, muttering something about people and their inability to tip sugar into their cup instead of onto the table.

He’s close to Hermann, the bulk of Hermann’s sweater brushing Newton’s sleeve, but it doesn’t bother Hermann all that much. The night before, the dinner in his office, had eased him a little. They’d sat on the floor despite Hermann’s protests and eaten dumplings and Newton had leaned against Hermann and touched his hand, stroked his fingers over the lines of his palm and down to the half-inch of skin of his wrist not covered by sleeve.

He blushes now at the proximity of Newton and the memory of that, and he focuses on his laptop so that no one sees him.

“Oo, fancy numbers,” says Newton - breathes really, right into his ear. Hermann shivers and flinches and growls.

“Don’t do that!” he snaps.

“What does it all mean?”

“I am reviewing a paper on inhomogeneities and the evolution of the universe.”

Newton makes the appropriate noise of amazement. “Sometimes I don’t really believe it’s real.”

“Of course it’s real, Newton. That’s what science is for, to tell us what’s real and what’s not.” He has a horrid thought and whirls to stare at Newton. “You’re not about to tell me that you’re religious, are you?”

“What? Dude! How long have you known me? I am offended. No!” he holds up a hand. “I’m not dealing with you. Chuck, you have to serve the mathematician.”

“Aw, do I have to?” grumbles Chuck.

“From now on, yeah!” He moves away from Hermann’s side and Hermann snatches him by the wrist.

“I apologise. Will you explain what you meant?” he asks, and Newton looks down at him, and, unable to help it, presses a quick kiss to the corner of Hermann’s mouth. Immediately the man blushes and turns to hide his face with his laptop.

“All of this. I mean, I know it’s right there, but haven’t you ever, I dunno, you like space? You ever looked at a picture of the Eagle Nebula and not really believed that it’s real? I remember reading about synapses and how does anyone know what’s going on there? It just seems like science fiction. Calcium does what now? How do we even know what a disulfide bridge is? I know it’s real, but sometimes it’s just… It’s so incredulous. Y’know?”

Hermann does know, but he’s not going to grace Newton’s terrible explanation with any kind of positive reinforcement. “No, Newton, I do not know. Mathematically anything can be explained, and those explanations must be trusted. It is an inability to trust those things that have people clinging to weaker faiths.”

“You worship numbers?”

“Numbers do not lie,” Hermann says grandly. “Science is born of empirical proof, not blind hope.”

“I think you just trashed biology in there somewhere and I’d love to argue the point with you, but I gotta get back to work,” says Newton as a customer comes in.

“You know, if you returned to academia this would be work!”

“But I get paid to argue with you now, and I don’t have to deal with students.” Newton looks his customer up and down. “You look like a student. Are you a student?”

“Yes,” says the young man.

“Ignore him,” snaps Hermann. “He has no idea how to interact with actual people.”

“Says you! Look at him,” he confides to the student. “Those clothes, that hair?”

“Uh… I just want a hot chocolate. Please?”

“Small, medium or large?”

“Uhhh, large.”

“Good man. Have here?” The student side-eyes Hermann, who’s back is turned and his fingers are moving quickly over his keyboard.

“I think not.”

“Wise decision.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry people who are in any way shape or form religious, I do not mean any harm.
> 
> I've been learning university science for five years now and I'm still about 80% certain everything is made up.


	25. Chuck

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's two chapters left of this, and seeing as I'm pretty crappy at trying to keep to any kind of uniform posting schedule they'll likely be up before the end of the week. I started writing this on March 13. I've got another Newt/Herm fic in the process of being finished and beta'd (a vampire AU that fits in with canon). Hopefully that will start going up around Easter time.
> 
> Again again thank you to all readers! I love you! And kudoers and commenters and everyone. If you are a person reading these words right now I love you.

The chair creaks as Harley spins idly around in a circle, watching the colours on the white-board blend together as he waits for the printer to spit out the last few pieces of paper he needs to give Kaoru before heading out for the night. It’s late, but not so that that the offices are empty. He can hear laughter from somewhere, and through his open office door he can hear the clicking of keys from Felicity across the hall.

If it were anyone else he’d email the document and be done with it, but Kaoru’s written English isn’t as good as his spoken and he finds it easier to read the letters when they’re not on a screen. He stacks up his things and puts them into his bag, realises he left his tupperware in the staffroom and figures he can get it tomorrow, and pulls on his jacket.

He turns off the monitor but leaves the computer running, churning through an equation that should be done by tomorrow. Hopefully. If it’s not he’ll have to borrow someone else’s, which is always an irritation.

He walks down the hall and says goodbye to Felicity, who nods at him over the edge of red glasses, notices that Ryan and Carmen - who shares his office - have gone for the night, and as he turns his head to say goodbye to Hermann he freezes with his foot in midair.

“Newton, isn’t it?”

“Newt, please,” he says. He’s sitting on the desk. Hermann is sitting in his chair, and they’re eating from fast food boxes.

Harley has known Hermann for several years and he has rarely seen him look so perfectly normal.

He notices that Newton’s feet are only in socks and that they are sitting closer together than Hermann would ever allow.

“Have a good night,” is all he manages to say before he forces himself to continue on, utterly perplexed. He stops at Kaoru’s shared office and finds only Charlie there.

“Kaoru’s left already?”

“Just missed him,” says Charlie, who’s packing zis bag. “You look a bit funny. You alright?”

“There was,” Harley looks back up the hall, feeling utterly perplexed. “You know, it’s nothing. Nothing at all. Have a good night.”

 

The next morning he finds Hermann in the staff room as they each put their lunch into the fridge.

Harley opens his mouth to say good morning and Hermann glowers at him. “Not a word,” he says.

“Not gonna say a single thing.” A few seconds later he says, “just one thing.” Hermann looks pained to grant him even that much, so he blurts it out quickly. “I’m happy. If you’re happy.”

“Oh. Well, thank you.”

“Carol’s sick,” says Harley after a beat.

“You want me to take her class.”

“Please?”

“Email me her notes,” he says stiffly, but before he goes back to his office he offers Harley a tentative smile. Harley returns it, happy to see Hermann happy.

Hermann gets to the room just as the previous class is filing out and has the usual short battle with the computer and the projector, but it’s all sorted out by the time the students start dribbling through the doors. He sits down on the stool beside the desk, knowing that he’ll probably want to get up and write something on the board but in between such explanations he needs to sit. He learned that early: no matter how good his leg is feeling, no matter how good he feels, he cannot last an hour jumping around in front of a board.

“Good morning,” he said. “I am Doctor Hermann Gottlieb, taking over for Doctor Che who is, unfortunately, ill. Rest assured, I studied this subject when I was your -” he falters in his look around at the students. Chuck’s there, wearing an old grey sweater and with a pen in one hand. “Age,” he finishes, clumsily. Chuck smirks, and Hermann glares. “Please feel free to stop me if I overlap anything Doctor Che has already taught you,” he snaps, and lurches off the chair with his cane in one hand and a piece of chalk in the other, ready to teach.

When he packs up his things and goes to leave he finds himself reaching the doorway at the same time as Chuck.

“No, please, Doctor,” says Chuck. There’s just a small amount of scathing in his voice. “After you.”

“I had no idea that you were a student,” says Hermann. He feels a little offended. “Mathematical engineering?”

“Obviously,” sneers Chuck. “Think I’d let on while you and Newt’re arguin’ about which is better? You act like a married couple and you’ve only been together for a few months.”

“Weeks, actually,” says Hermann primly. Two weeks and four days, and that weekend is going to be their third date. Only that’s not precisely true. Newton has taken his break at the same time that Hermann’s come into the coffee shop and they’ve sat as close as the tiny place demands, which is very, to talk about science and novels and anything else that crosses their mind. Newton’s come to Hermann’s office a couple more times and they’ve had dinner together, unofficial not-really dates.

He’s never spent so much time with anyone before. He feels like his stomach is in his chest and his heart is in his mouth, everything’s too fast and he doesn’t know how to let go. He doesn’t really want to.

They’ve got their third date that weekend.

“Yeah, whatever, mate,” says Chuck. “If you speak a word of this to anyone at the cafe I’ll mince your face.”


	26. 24.9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My German is old but maybe I got the one sentence here correct.

Hermann didn’t take lunch that day, having had nothing in the fridge and planning to buy something on his way from the coffee shop. He feels a little nervous tension in his chest at the thought of seeing Newton, excitement and butterflies mixed into one.

It’s Saturday tomorrow. Their third official date.

It’s not until he’s in the shop debating between plain apple juice or apple and mango to go with his lunch that he’s struck with the realisation of what the third date means. He pauses there with both juices in hand and blushes merely at the thought of it, his stomach curling in on itself.

He wants this though. Doesn’t he? He thinks he does. He’s mostly certain that he does, and he’s very certain that Newton won’t ask for more than he is certain he is able to give.

He fumbles his way through choosing the non-lunch items from the isle at the far end of the store, and the girl behind the till very carefully does not meet his eye as he hands his things over to be scanned. He wishes he’d had the foresight to go up the street to the place with the self-serve checkouts. When he gets back to the office he buries the lube and condoms under some papers in his desk drawer, feeling some kind of embarrassed shame at having brought them here. He’s certain everyone knows, is judging and sniggering behind his back. He squares his shoulders and ignores the feeling, and thinks about maths.

He has a class to teach, then, and he tries to put all thoughts of the weekend out of his mind, but it still drags on. He finds himself checking the clock more often than necessary, rushing through the information and frowning when he sees he still has half a dozen slides to get through. He decides to let his students go early, unable to properly concentrate.

 

 

Hermann’s working. He’s working on assignments. It’s awful, dreadful, terribly dull work. It’s not even marking assignments. That, he could do. He’s writing assignments, going through course-work and trying to remember that his students are not as intelligent as him. That’s not an insult, it’s merely a fact, but it’s something he sometimes forgets and he makes the questions more difficult than they have any reason to be.

He rolls his eyes at the clock, though the time makes no difference to whether or not he leaves. He’s going to finish these two assignments, and he’s going to go home. If he’d been less distracted this afternoon he could have finished this already, but he was and he hasn’t so here he sits.

He’s determined. He’s going to finish these two assignments. He’s going to have a hot bath and eat the rest of the soup he made for dinner the night before, and then he’s going to turn on the TV and watch Battlestar Galactica as he falls asleep.

It’s a regular Friday routine, and it might not be drinking-clubbing-young-person fun, but it’s his kind of fun, and that’s all that matters.

It used to be that people would ask him out, mostly on the premise that any single young man, especially one with a limp, would want dark, loud spaces with at-least-slightly drunk girls around. Hermann had tried it, twice, once before meeting Vanessa and once after meeting her but before he’d determined that even for the promise of friendship he has no desire to put himself in such uncomfortable positions.

He’d decided, shortly after that, that he was over trying to make other people happy. He enjoys his quiet spaces and his mathematics.

He picks up his cup of tea and finds that it’s cold, and he sighs, twirls his pen over his long fingers and decides he will reward himself with another cup after he finishes writing this paragraph.

He wakes his computer up again and sighs at the course manual, rereading words he has memorised and getting absolutely no inspiration.

With a groan he pulls off his glasses and rubs at the bridge of his nose. “Why-y?” he sighs. “Why do I do this to myself?”

“I have no idea,” says a familiar too-loud voice at his doorway. He spins, having forgotten he’d even left the door open.

“What are you doing here?”

Newton’s leaning against the doorway.

“Honestly, you need to stop greeting me like that. Like you’re surprised I get bored and come visit.” Hermann’s pretty sure that he’s never told Newton his thing for men leaning in doorways. He only catches the last sentence of whatever Newton is saying. “If you had a phone I’d warn you.”

“I have a phone,” says Hermann. “And several email addresses. Perhaps I should give you one. The spam account would suit you, I think.”

“But you don’t have a mobile phone,” says Newton. “Calling someone to talk? That’s, like, soooo twentieth century. And honestly, dude?” He steps forward and plops himself down in the other chair. “I don’t get why I have to explain this to you. You’re as old as me. Don’t you, like, text?”

“Who would I text?” sneers Hermann. “I’m not exactly swimming in social acquaintances.”

“Yeah, well, I’m here on a Friday night, too,” says Newton. He puts a foot on the desk and pushes himself so he spins around in a circle. Hermann growls low in his throat, which only prompts Newton to do it again. “Whatcha up to?”

“Assignments.”

“Is it important?” he asks. “More important than me?”

No, of course they’re not. Few things are more important than Newton. Hermann frowns. “Despite your assumptions to the contrary the universe does not centre around you. These need to be completed by Monday.”

“Monday? Goodness me, Dr Gottlieb,” teases Newton, “I thought you’d be the kind of student to have your homework done at least a week before the due date.”

“They’re not my assignments,” snaps Hermann. “I am writing them.” Realisation comes over Newton and he chuckles a little at his mistake. “Do you have a reason for being here? I am seeing you tomorrow night. Unless..?”

“Oh, yeah, no, course you are! I just didn’t have anything planned tonight so I thought, hey, Hermann has no friends either so why don’t we be friends together.” He grins at his logic.

“I don’t know if that was a compliment at my company or an insult at my social life.”

“Little of column A, little of column B… Anyway, so, you finish that, I’ll grab some Chinese or something?”

“You are under no obligations to spend time with me.”

“I know that, dude. I came here, to see you. Chinese?”

Hermann glances at the paper in front of him and very much doubts that Newton’s interruption will allow him to finish his assignments. He has the weekend, but he loathes doing teaching work in his free time.

That said, he loathes doing it now, and Newton is here and Newton is offering a very positive distraction. “Very well,” he says, as though it is a great effort to agree. “I suppose I could put aside this for a few hours.”

“Awesome!” says Newton. He bounds up out of the chair. “Be back in a tick!”

Hermann buckles down as best he can to actually finish the damn assignment before he returns.

 

“I went to the Green Coin because I thought it was Chinese but instead it was just ambiguously Asian. So,” he begins, taking plastic containers out of a bag. “Sweet and sour pork, crispy chicken - everyone loves crispy chicken - and this chili thing because I don’t like chili but you’re a savoury person so of course you like chili.”

“Pardon? I like chili because I’m a what?”

“A savoury person. Some people are sweet and some people are savoury, and my roommate in second year college did this quiz on all his friends and decided that people like chili in indirect proportion to how sweet they are. And I’m a bit abrasive but sweet enough to not like chili, and you’re all tweed jackets and wool vests so obviously you’re savoury-”

“Obviously,” says Hermann, dryly.

“Look, okay, you like chili, yeah?”

Hermann grumbles, but says yes, a little grumpily.

“See? You’re just another data point on the great graph Arnold started back in school.”

They end up sitting on the floor to eat, as Newton prefers to lean precariously backwards in his chair with only two legs on the ground. Hermann snapped at him, Newton tried to sit on the desk, Hermann swore at him in German, and now they’re both on the floor. Newton’s sitting cross-legged, looking more prim and proper than he has any reason to, while Hermann’s sprawled a little to accommodate his unbending leg.

They’re sitting and eating and talking, Hermann regaling a tale of his childhood to Newton’s single-child amazement. Siblings always fascinated him. Hermann’s telling it in German, because it happened in German and has German characters, and then he slips on a word he can’t remember and mangles a sentence half into English, and Newton laughs. He laughs and he tilts so that he’s laughing with his forehead pressed into Hermann’s hair, and he’s shaking so hard that it hurts and Hermann’s only getting more irritated by the second.

“For god’s sake,” he snaps. “Calm down. My German is not that humorous.”

“Oh, but it is,” cackles Newton. “You never get anything wrong.”

“Thank you for noticing.”

Then Newton struggles upright. “Where’s your pen? I need to write this down. On the board, I think, what did you say?” He casts around and finds a marker and space on the white board. “When - that’s als, by the way, what a ridiculous mistake,” Hermann blushes with anger, “- meine Schwester sixzehn - you said sixzehn, right?” He giggles and underlines it on the board. “Sechzehn war, fuhr sie das Auto into a creek - in den Brach - und die ducks - that’s Enten - waren auf dem backseat.” He taps his lower lip with the lidded end of the marker. “What’s backseat auf Deutsch?” 

“I think the fact that my sister drove the car into the creek is far more interesting than my linguistics.”

“Ohhh, you can’t remember!”

“Neither can you!”

“I haven’t been home in a decade, except for holidays. Obviously my language abilities are not going to be up to scratch. When did you last see the Motherland?”

“Four years ago,” says Hermann.

“Christmas was only a few months ago,” says Newton.

“I don’t go home for Christmas,” Hermann says, stoutly. He hasn’t let on that his relationship with his parents is less than stellar. His siblings, too, are more distant acquaintances than real friends, though that’s more due to proximity and lack of time than lack of desire. Talking about his siblings doesn’t hurt, but he does not allow so much as the word ‘father’ to pass his lips.

He holds his gaze with Newton, daring him to ask and hoping to hell that Newton will back down. He’s having a nice evening and he has no desire to drag that into this. Newton looks away, towards the board.

“We’re scientists, German is a simple language.” He taps his lip again with the marker, and Hermann’s distracted by that long enough that he starts when Newton makes a sudden triumphant noise, “Rücksitz. Duh.”

Something within Hermann grinds and clicks into place. “Newton,” he says. He holds up a hand.

“Yeah?” asks Newton, busy scribbling on the board.

“Newt,” says Hermann patiently. “Come here.”

“Why?” he asks, finishing his writing with a flourish, and he turns and sees the outstretched hand and takes it, sinking down to his knees beside Hermann and allowing the other man to draw him into a long, slow kiss. “Oh, man, I like you,” breathes Newton. “I mean, I really, really like you.”

Hermann just murmurs something unintelligible and kisses him again, lips and tongue, and pulls Newton down onto his lap.

Hermann’s not the smooth savvy sort of guy. He’s more the glasses-bumping too-much-teeth and awkward-pauses sort of guy, but somehow he has Newton sitting on his lap with a leg either side of his thighs, leaning into him and kissing him like there’s no place else he’d rather be.

He isn’t sure he believes it’s happening, even when Newton’s hands are sliding down and tugging at his shirt, grumbling into his neck that, dude, you have got to wear fewer layers. Hermann only shivers at the feel of lips against his throat, cold fingertips finding the warm skin of his lower back.

He groans into the touch, and seeks his own, sliding fingers beneath the soft cotton of Newton’s old shirt, not caring how this looks or what this means. He wants to touch. He licks his tongue over Newton’s jugular and he is stopped too soon by the unkind texture of the collar of his shirt, so he grabs it and pulls up and off. It catches on Newton’s chin and Hermann blushes and Newton laughs. Hermann slaps Newton’s hand away from helping, embarrassed and bothered, but Newton’s not moving away and he lets Hermann tug his shirt off fully. Then Hermann’s tongue is over Newton’s collarbone, distracting either of them from anything that isn’t this, now, them, together.

Newton struggles with Hermann’s sweater and then messes around with the buttons on his shirt, and he growls, “fuck, man, seriously. Your clothes, they’re going to kill me.”

“Shut up,” mumbles Hermann, tongue in the cleft between clavicles, and Newton complies. He gives up and starts on Hermann’s trousers, and neither of them really intended this to happen, not now, but Hermann’s blood is pounding and he’s hot all the way through to his core. He shifts and lifts up so that Newton can pull down, and he groans at the cold air and sudden hands, and he pushes on Newton’s chest.

The man topples over, slowly, gracelessly, and Hermann leans over him to tug off Newton’s trousers and underwear, getting stuck at the shoes. He unlaces them carefully, long fingers tugging on string and pulling loose knots, and Newton watches, slack-mouthed, at Hermann’s long pale fingers and reddish knuckles.

“Come here,” Newton says, when his shoes and socks are off and his trousers and underwear are discarded with them. “Come here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please don't have expectations of the next chapter, the rating of this fic is staying the same and I'm not writing an actual sex scene.


	27. 25

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have been awake for precisely 18 hours and 22 minutes. Today I handed up one research proposal, one assignment, cut and coloured my friend's hair and realised that I am so much more okay with being asexual than I ever thought I would be.
> 
> Here's the final chapter. It's been a bad few weeks for me and I've been posting chapters when I needed comments as a pick-me-up. You've helped me, and I hope, in return, you've enjoyed this story all the way through to the end. Thank you for reading, I'm honoured you've spent your time on me.

Hermann looks around his office from the curious angle of the floor. He shifts, lifts the item of clothing that’s crumbled underneath him, and rearranges it under his hip. It doesn’t help much, but the idea of getting up isn’t a thrilling one.

He tilts his head and looks at Newton, who’s lying down half a foot away from him, the back of his hand resting on Hermann’s shin. He notices then, a little embarrassed, that he still has his socks on.

“That was,” he begins, mostly for something to fill the silence.

“Didn’t happen,” Newton interrupts.

Hermann swallows, and forces himself to be calm. “Excuse me? I believe you were there - still are here, in fact.”

Newton twists onto one elbow, and his socks are off, while Hermann has his socks on and his shirt unbuttoned still hanging on his arms, his undershirt pushed up and twisted around his torso. Hermann’s a little irritated by that, though a few minutes ago he was completely beyond caring.

“Are you trying to tell me that when you said, hm, what was it? ‘Fuck, keep going, that’s - you’re delicious, fuck, this is better than anything - ohmygod’,” Hermann quotes him dryly, feeling a twist of panic rise up through his chest and resolutely ignoring it. “Were you, in fact, lying?”

“No, no! Dude, I was gonna do this properly. Gonna cook you dinner and wear a tie.”

Hermann raises an eyebrow. “A tie? Do you even own a tie?”

“I do so! Had to, didn’t I, back when I taught.” He sighs and moves so that his head is on Hermann’s stomach. “We’ll have to do this again.”

“Obviously,” says Hermann, letting out a shaky breath. “I’m not a one-night-stand kind of man.”

“Nah, with, like, a tie, and I’ll cook you dinner and I’ll greet you at the door and take your coat.”

“Goodness,” says Hermann. “How common-man of you.”

“You’re very sarcastic after sex and I don’t know if I like it,” says Newton.

“But you liked _it_?” asks Hermann. He’s pretty sure but he wants to know.

“The sex? The sex was great. Unbelievable. I mean, that was our first time so it’s only gonna go up and like, man, I am excited for that. Can we go again now?” He moves his arm, casting around on the floor for the half-crushed box of condoms.

“No,” says Hermann. “And not least because we are not doing that again here, ever.”

“You mean we’re gonna have to wait a bit before we consider role-playing? I mean, I know we gotta build up the trust, you can’t just launch into a new relationship with all your kinks laid bare, but Herm-”

“This is my office,” says Hermann.

“Where you have condoms.” He giggles. “Such a stupid word. Condoms.” Hermann slaps him lightly, and Newton gasps and laughs. “But really, you’re not into office things? Because current circumstances suggest otherwise.”

“This was unintentional. I would have much preferred for it to have occurred elsewhere.”

“Oh, dude! Your leg! Are you okay?” He jolts away from Hermann as though the weight of his head on Hermann’s stomach is causing all the pain. “Want me to move?” Hermann grabs his hair and tugs him back to where he was lying.

“If we move it is to get up entirely, and to go home.” Newton’s silence fills the room. “I can hear you over-thinking.”

“Do you want to come to mine?” Newton blurts. “It’s the weekend, so you don’t have to rush home for clothes in the morning. And, I can make you breakfast? It’s not dinner but I can cook a mean breakfast, when I’m motivated. And you,” he moves his head to place a kiss to the soft skin beneath Hermann’s ribcage, “are definitely motivation.”

“Alright.”

“I mean, you don’t have to-”

“I said alright,” Hermann repeats.

“Oh. You did too.” Newton leavers himself up, naked and marked red from the carpet, tattoos a swirl of colour that stretches incomplete from hip to collarbone. Hermann doesn’t hate them. He doesn’t love them, either. He doesn’t really have an opinion on them, they’re just there, and Hermann never takes neutrality. He suspects, over time, he’s going to love them.

He doesn’t know how he feels about that.

Newton holds out a hand, and Hermann uses it to pull himself up.

“How is it that I’m naked and you’re not?” asks Newton, as he bends to begin picking up clothes. “I mean, that’s just not fair. And now you’re putting on more clothes,” he says, watching as Hermann leans on the desk as he pulls on his underwear. Hermann blushes a little at the scrutiny. It was different before, when they were both focused on other things, but with the harsh glare of the fluorescent lights he feels exposed. Horrid to behold. His right leg is scrawny and he needs to lean on the desk just to pull on his trousers.

Yet Newton is telling him that he wishes he were more naked.

“I’m sure you’ll have another opportunity.”

“Yeah, later,” says Newton. “Not now.”

“If you had wanted me undressed you could have undressed me,” says Hermann, pulling his sweater over his head and readjusting his shirt cuffs. “It isn’t my fault you were distracted.”

“I think it was,” says Newton. “I am blaming you, entirely.” He watches Hermann critically as he pulls on his jacket. “You know I’m going to make you take all of that off as soon as we get to mine.”

“Yes,” says Hermann. He puts his cane into one hand and picks up his bag. “I’m betting on it.” He turns off the office light and steps out.

Newton reaches out a hand and finds that Hermann has both of his occupied, and grumbles, steals his bag, and tangles their fingers together so they can walk hand-in-hand to the elevator. 


End file.
